Trust
by AnnaNymose
Summary: There was a time, before the Guardians, that something happened so gigantic that few remember the exact details. It's what led to the creation of the Guardians, to Pitch's presence on Earth, and to a story that wasn't told quite right. It left something out, it blamed a hero. And now the Guardians have to decide if they'll face an unknown enemy alone, or put their faith in trust.
1. A Girl in a Tree

_-Hello and welcome back those of you who have been reading my stories for awhile, and hello and welcome to those of you who are just discovering this now. This is an__OC__story, but I do hope you'll give it a chance. This is my fourth__RoTG__fanfiction__and by far the one I've put the most work into. A special thanks to TrueManevolenGirl4899, an up-and-coming writer herself who I__recommend__taking a look at. That being said, I own no part of__RoTG__and all credit goes to respected owners. Enjoy 3 -_

_-Jack Frost-_

"What would make you think this was me?"

"Is that even a question anymore, mate?" I paused, mouth open and holding out a peace-giving hand to the half-frozen Guardian in front of me, but drew a blank. Then, with an attempt at easing the tension he was giving off, fur standing on end, chuckled. The Pooka growled deep in his chest and I watched as he sized himself up, paws clenched into fists and whiskers shaking on his face, half out of anger and half out of being covered in tiny ice crystals that hung to the ends of his fur, dragging down the ends. I pulled my legs in and jumped back a bit onto the railing, gripping the grooves in the shepard's crook that had done the deed which had currently got me into a bit of a pickle.

"Hey, hey now, Bunny! C'mon, it was just a joke! How 'bout I make it up to ya, hm? I'll, uh..." I thought, nervously chuckling as the bi-pedal bunny slowly stalked towards me, stifling a snort of laughter as he slipped a bit on the sheet of ice that covered the entire overlook of the workshop, "...I'll clean the Warren! Or I'll take visiting-duty for North!" I offered, holding out a hand that I quickly took back as he got close, running it through my hair and feeling little flecks of ice from where the shepard's crook had flown back and accidentally hit me in the head.

"Oh, how 'bout I do ya one better, Frostbite!" Bunny threatened, and I saw him reach for one of the boomerangs in the brown sling across his chest and back. I was about to jump off and try to hide from the irate Pooka, at least until he calmed down, but just as he shook off ice crystals and his paw gripped the boomerang behind him, a considerably kinder voice broke into the scene.

"Bunny! Jack- oh!" In a blurr of purple and green, Toothiana was suddenly beside Bunnymund, wings twitching more than flapping at an incredible pace, one brow raised as she looked around at the ground below her. "Um...Bunny?" She asked, looking over at him. I had to bite down hard on my lower lip to keep back another snort of laughter, seeing the ice on Bunny's coat beginning to melt as consequence of his anger. Now he didn't so much look like a 6,1 Guardian of Hope, but more a pet bunny after bath time.

"D'ya see what that bloody show-pony did?!" He accused, using both hands to point around him furiously. Tooth looked over at me, crossing her arms and giving me a scolding look that was anything but serious. I shrugged, standing and throwing the staff across my shoulders, giving her a smirk back. Unlike Bunny, Tooth found some shred of humor in what I did, and would have laughed had it not been for Bunny's temper, I was sure of it.

"What? This place was getting kinda boring, thought Bunny'd wanna go ice skating with me. What about it, Aster?" I asked, and he muttered something obscene under his breath, earning a real scolding look from Tooth. He frowned hard, but relented and scooted away from her, continuing to glare at me as Tooth shook her head at the two of us. I chuckled and relaxed, Bunny making a face at me and me returning it by sticking my tongue out.

"Sandy! Es serious! Manny does not- Govno!" Everyone flinched hard as the massive, Russian Guardian came crashing rather ungracefully across the ice, splaying out on the floor and shaking the foundation of the overlook. My stomach dropped, swinging the staff in front of me and gripping it tightly as Tooth and Sandy both rushed over to help the massive man to his feet, North shaking his head and rubbing his temple with one palm. I chuckled nervously and felt Bunny's knowing gaze on me, avoiding it by standing and bouncing a bit.

"How...?! Floor! Es...but..." North paused a moment, standing and motioning all around him at the ice-slicked floor, an incredulous look on his face. _'You'd think he'd get used to this after a few years...' _I thought to myself, but kept my mouth shut, trusting North to be the most forgiving of this small incident. And, sure enough, after a few seconds of looking from me to the floor, his mood switched like a light and he threw his head back, letting loose a floor-shaking belly laugh. I beamed, bouncing a little as Bunny groaned.

"Es ice-rink! Nice touch Jack, es very funny." North applauded, laughing all over again when an elf went skidding between his legs and right over to the stairs, bells jingling.

"Oi! Anyone here wanna get me a bloody towel? I'm freezin' my arse-"

"Bunny! Language!" Tooth scolded, and I bit my lip to keep from snorting for the third time in five minutes. Before Bunny could retort, his face incredulous and paws out in a form of mercy, Sandy suddenly burst in between the two of them, a wave of sand crashing down and catching the light in a purposefully blinding moment, exploding out from his already-stuck-up hair like fireworks.

I looked over to him, everyone silent now, a look on the small, mute Guardian's face that told me he had probably been trying to get our attention for awhile now. He huffed and, with one tiny arm and hand, thrust a finger at North. The large Russian ran his fingers through his beard, eyes wide as Sandy flashed images at him at a frustrated pace.

I'd been trying to spend more time with Sandy lately, sitting next to the golden little man and working hard at deciphering his sand-images that would appear above his head, golden granuals that were his only way of communicating. It had taken me about two years, but I could finally catch most of a fast-moving conversation, picking up the image of a moon, and envelope, an exclamation point, the image of a child in bed, and finally a large and ornate G that usually symbolized Guardians.

Something about Manny and the kids and us.

North's eyes flickered, and then instantly became serious, a play of emotions sliding along on his face as easy as gliding across ice. He nodded and turned to the rest of us, Sandy floating upwards and onto a soft, downy-looking clouds of shimmering golden sand, resting below me.

"Sandy es right, I forgot most important news!" North announced, but without the usual gusto. Now, his voice took on a tone I hadn't heard in awhile, the kind of tone that made me inadvertently grip the staff tighter, feel the grooves and absentmindedly send small tendrils of frost along the edges. It was deep, gravelly, and concerned. North wasn't concerned about light matters. I quirked up an eyebrow as he motioned to the ceiling of the workshop, a curved structure with a perfect circle in the top that allowed for the fading day to show purples and yellows across the sky.

"Manny has just spoken to me," North began, and a pang of envy had to be suppressed quickly before it showed, "He has given me troubling news, news that could mean something big es coming."

There was a collective sensation of dread amongst the five of us. It didn't have to be said, we knew it was there. Had been, despite a victory two years earlier that we had all hoped would put an end to any such threat. A dread that had stayed, a fear somewhere in a place none of us wanted to outwardly acknowledge. Tooth's wings stilled and she touched silently to the floor, glossy feathers matting down. Bunny stopped muttering under his breath, taking a step towards North as if to speak, but was silenced by a large hand.

"Es nothing definite, but Man in Moon has warned us, all of us, that there have been..." He paused, as if trying to find the right wording for the situation, sensing how tense it had become so quickly in the pocket of silence that surrounded us amist the clattering and buzzing of the workshop below, "...Disturbances in the dreams of children." He finally managed, and my gaze fell down to Sandy below me, but couldn't see his face from my angle. All I could see were his crossed arms and stiffer-than-usual stature.

"You don't mean that...?" Tooth asked delicately, letting the question hang in the air, none of us wanting to say what we really thought it was.

"Es hard to say. No nightmares, Manny has said, just...pockets of silence? Es that right Sandy?" North asked, looking to the small man who had obviously had a part in this as the Guardian of Dreams. He nodded fervently, and flashed images that I deciphered as him saying that dreams, recently, had been stopping and starting through the night without children waking up.

"Waddaya mean silence? Dreams can't jus' stop, can they?" Bunny asked, a defensively skeptical tone in his voice. I shrugged, physically and mentally trying to rid myself of the uncomfortably tight feeling that had knotted into my stomach.

"Maybe it's just the weather. I haven't given some places a nice snow day in awhile, been too busy keeping Bunny company." I tried to joke lightly, smirking and nodding towards the large Guardian of Hope, whose growl was audible from where I stood on the railing. North shook his head, large fingers running through a thick white beard in a thoughtful manner.

"Dreams are acting very funny-like, Jack, I doubt that weather could cause such a disturbance." He tried, but Bunny wasn't having any of it today, much to my enjoyment.

"Oi, I'd like ta say likewise! Bloody show pony nearly snowed me outta last Easta'!" He defended, and I laughed out loud this time, shaking off the tension in the air. Yeah, the thought got to me too. The thought that he would be back, the memories of what he had done to the kids, the memories... I didn't want to think about it. Didn't want to go back to that. Not now, not with what I had, not after I'd found a place I almost belonged in. Not when Jamie and Sophie needed a nice ol' snow day to relax them.

"See? Bunny's right! You guys are over-reacting, all that 'hard work's gotten to your heads." I popped the staff up into the air and caught it in one hand, twirling it in my fingers once and smirking at North and Tooth's still-worried expressions. "Listen, after what happened, it'd take a whole lot longer than two years for Pitch to come back again, let alone with any power. Buuuuuut, " I tacked onto the end, spinning the staff again and this time feeling a familiar breeze blow past my arm, crisp and catching me in the updraft, letting me jump up and balance my feet on the staff right in the middle of the air, "I'll go check on Jamie and Sophie anyway. I'll even make sure Pitch's creepy, shady lair is all closed up like it was before. If anything goes wrong, you guys'll be the first to know."

The wind picked up gust, cutting off any protest I might have gotten. Honestly, I wanted to go check on the two kids, especially Jamie. He'd been growing up fast, and I wanted to be there for that. But really, I just wanted to get out of this conversation. It wasn't that I felt it would get intense for them, that maybe I was afraid of some underlying truth. I just...needed to get out. Get away from that reality. Dreams could be disturbed by many things...but not likely more than one. A one that I wanted to stay buried.

And maybe North knew that, because as I kicked up and off, staff in hand, I saw him give a resigned little smile and nod my way. He understood. My chest lightened, my hand squeezed on the staff. Two years wasn't nearly enough time to get used to the feeling of being understood, not after three-hundred years of solitude. And I didn't really want to get used to it, not when it made me fly faster, smile harder, knowing I had a home to come back to.

But now, Jamie and Sophie needed a little early-season blizzard. Fall was almost over.

_-Alice-_

Colors blew past, dancing up and down, leaving streaks behind them that were quickly covered by more colors. Browns, golds, reds, oranges, mixing and delicately bobbing in the excited wind. It blew and shook, rustling and dodging past trees, filtering through my hair and the fibers in my sweater. It lightly traced my face with crisp fingers in passing, swirling up and away with the multi-colored leaves it that had tagged along for the ride. The tree I rested on wouldn't mind, soon all of its leaves would be gone, but they'd come back. They always did, whenever I came back for Autumn, a fresh new batch of green waiting to get doused in color.

That wasn't my job, but I did like to sit and watch it happen, suddenly, over the course of weeks as if it forgot the season lasted months. But, while it was in a rush, I was content to sit in the crook of a large branch in a smaller tree, resting back against the strong trunk and looking to the sky for any changing of the light. Now, though, it was impossible to tell. Where the sky had been a crisp blue, deep and fresh, there were now unseasonably puffy clouds all clumped together, a dark grey in some areas and lightening to a faded white in others, the kind of colors that means something's coming.

I pulled my feet closer, shifted my arms to cross my stomach, bunching my fingers into the sleeves of the downy sweater. The sound of rubber sneakers on the tree branch was muffled by a new breeze, this one just as excited as the last, but bringing something different. Something fresher. Something early. Something out-of-place. Something cold.

Something white.

I blinked, eyes crossing as I looked up at what had gotten caught in my hair. Just above my eyebrows, a fleck of white on red hair. I let out a heavy breath to blow it away, but instead it disappeared. And then there was another, floating across my vision. And another, falling down in a similar fashion. Two more. Five. Twenty. The wind blew and suddenly I looked up again, only to see countless many of them falling, twirling in the wind, a colorless representation of what I'd previously been watching.

But it was just as beautiful. I found myself smiling, if not a tad bit confused. Yes, fall was ending soon, but from what I'd been counting it still had another two weeks left in it. Far too early for snow, even in a cold little town like this one, and especially odd after the sky had been clear not an hour earlier. Regardless, I stretched my head up and breathed in, flakes feathering my face and lungs filling with full, cold air. It stretched my lungs and refreshed my sight, opening my eyes to see everything in sharp detail, something only a snowy kind of air could do.

The only unfortunate part that I could think of, watching as the white flecks gathered and clung to the other to quickly dust the ground, was that now I couldn't tell when night would fall. And that meant turning in early, just to be safe. But not now, no now I would sit and enjoy this.

"Ready or not, here I come!"

I jumped a bit at the sudden noise, a young boy somewhere in the treeline beyond a tiny little patch of white-spotted grass. I shifted on the branch, crouched with one knee balanced on the branch and an arm slung halfway around the tree trunk to steady myself. Tilting my head a bit, I listened to the voice, feeling as if I'd heard it somewhere in passing. The kind of voice that's easy to place with a face, but a face that I'd never seen before. There were uneven footsteps, like someone half-leaping, and a hearty laugh.

Then, without so much as a warning, the boy broke through the treeline walking backwards, cupping one hand to his face and calling out,

"I'll find you! Don't think about running home!" There were no other laughs to be heard, but the feeling of other presences was strong, and the boy seemed confident that he was near the other children he was playing with. He walked backwards with a certain bounce in his step, and it was then that I realized he wore no shoes, his feet pale and bare...and yet they did not melt the thin blanket of snow beneath him. Something akin to curiosity and timid excitement clicked in my head and I leaned down a bit, the boy still not looking my way.

He wore brown trousers tied at the calves and a blue hoodie that, as he walked a bit closer to the tree, I realized was covered in splintering patterns of frost from the shoulders to about halfway down. In his hand he held a shepard's crook, knotted and scratched up, seemingly more ancient than the boy must have been. From what I could see of the back of his head, his skin was smooth, unblemished, and pale. He looked young, very young, like a teenager. Except he had a curious frock of white, disheveled hair on top of his head.

And then I realized that he couldn't be an ordinary boy. And then I was a bit afraid, something unpleasant falling into my gut.

But he turned around before I could flee.

"Hey!" He called, dark eyebrows raising and eyes widening a bit, bouncing as if taken aback but looking nothing more than a bit startled. I paused, inching towards the tree next to me and hugging it tightly, mouth open to say something but no words coming out. I was waiting. Searching his face for any sign of recognition, for what followed recognition. I felt my calves tense up, breath caught in my chest, ready.

His eyebrows furrowed, his chin lifted, and he slid a hand into the front pocket of his hoodie.

"How'd you get up there?"

And I paused again. I processed an innocent question. Pale blue eyes wide with mischief and wonder. A smirk that read pages in this boy's book, telling of someone a bit unhinged, a bit rowdy, and completely oblivious. He didn't know who I was. And he was smiling at me.

"I flew." I answered, not trying in the least to fight the tug at the corners of my mouth, gripping the grooves in the tree that I had my arm around, some sort of stuffy feeling in my chest that I tried to hide, tried not to look too giddy. He chuckled, thinking it was a joke, but then paused and widened his eyes a bit.

"Wait, are you serious? I-I mean, are you a..." He let the question linger, and I shoved down the anxiety his question had brought. He didn't know, he had that look about him. A peaceful, trusting ignorance. I relaxed and, seeing the comically confused look on his face, chuckled a little, the feeling a bit foreign in my chest. My own voice sounding a bit odd, and feeling unpracticed as it was sent out to another person, to another being almost like myself. I was talking to someone, an even that did not happen often. Did not happen at all, really. Not like this.

"Am I like you?" I asked for him, and then smirked, "Do I look like you?" He let out a nervous chuckle and then brought the hand out of his pocket, scratching the back of his head.

"Well, if you take away the whole 'girl' thing, I can see how you could pass for a dashing strangers on a fall evening." He rebounded, half-bowing as I rolled my eyes playfully and quirked my head to the side.

"Or maybe you could pass for a girl with those eyelashes of yours." I retorted, and he fluttered his eyes flamboyantly. And I laughed. Like, and open-mouthed, coming-from-the-chest kind of laugh. And I tried so hard not to look too excited, tried not to look like this kind of thing hadn't happened to me for as long as my memory could stretch back. I tried to look like someone this boy would normally talk to, and hoped for something I couldn't quite place.

"Were you the one that caused this snow?" I asked, running my hand through my hair and feeling cold, icy bits melt onto my skin. He twirled the staff in his hand and smirked, raising a sly eyebrow.

"Yeah, you like it? I know it's kinda early." He said, and I cut him off a bit.

"About two weeks, if I counted right." I smirked as he turned around, looking a bit caught off-guard.

"Wait, oh man, is Fall your...I mean, are you a fall spirit?" He asked, and I shook my head lightly, still smiling and looking up at the tree, branches just beginning to thin from the wind carrying away colorful leaves, leaves now being dotted with clinging snowflakes.

"No, not really. I don't control it, if that's what you mean. I just kind of...follow it." I explained, and inwardly sighed when he didn't ask any further question on it, seemingly relieved himself that he hadn't ruined a spirit's season. They all tended to be a bit picky about time constraints. "I do like the snow, though. Haven't been around to see any in awhile. So you're a Winter spirit?" I changed the subject to him, looking at the curious boy whose entire being almost vibrated with excitement and mischief.

He spun to me on one foot and held the staff out in a way of introduction, saying,

"Jack Frost, at your service. Surprised you haven't heard of me, I'm a popular topic in seasonal-spirit forums." Jack Frost. Now I remembered where I'd heard his voice before. Sometimes the Earth was odd, sometimes I lost track of the days, and sometimes I would linger in an area for a bit too long. Those times that I stayed a week or two into winter, I would heard a voice and a laughter, feel a playful wind brush past me. Jack Frost. I smiled at him.

"Well let's just say, I'm not." I retorted, brushing it off airily. Something flashed through his eyes, but I couldn't catch it in time to place it. Before he could ask, trying to steady myself, I shifted against the tree and tried to greet casually, "My name's Alice. Like in Wonderland. But not from Wonderland." Nailed it.

Jack laughed and nodded, opening his mouth to say something, but the sound of a little girl coming out instead.

"Jack! Jack!" He turned and I heard a rustling in the forest somewhere, looking up. The sound of small children echoed, a younger boy calling after the girl. I panted a silent breath.

"Hold on, Sophie!" Jack called, and then turned back to me, a look in his eyes I didn't recognize. Openness, maybe. Acceptance. But that was too vague. "Hey, you wanna join us? We're playing a rousing game of hide-and-seek." He offered, but his eyes instantly widened when I apparently didn't hide very well the coil of fear that twisted through me at the thought of children. "Wait! Oh man, my bad, I'm a mess, totally my bad! They can't...I mean, can kids see you? Are you invisible? Because man believe me, I understand, but these kids'll-"

"Oh, no, that's fine Jack!" I eased him, "Kids can see me, it's just...it's getting a bit late and I've got somewhere to be. But..." And I paused, because this next part I really did mean, meant with more of me than I thought I had, "...Thank you, Jack. For inviting me." _For not knowing who I am. For wanting to play._

"No problem. You gonna stick around for those next two weeks?" Jack asked as I shifted a bit so that I was crouched on both feet. It took a second for those words to sink in. The meaning. And while I told myself it couldn't be more than him not knowing me, that he'd find out, that they all did, that there was no chance I'd ever actually be able to see this boy again in the same way I did now...

"I think so. This place is beautiful, I wouldn't mind sticking around a bit longer. You?" I asked in return.

"You could say I frequent this place. I owe those two a lot, ya know?" He said, smirking and nodding back to where the kids could still be heard, "See you around?" He asked, a gust blowing past me and him jumping up, almost catching the wind with an invisible kite and floating on it, staff aloft in one hand and his smirk lighting up. I stood, feeling the bark of the tree on my fingers, feeling something velvety and grainy trickle between my fingers. It really was time for me to go. I threw Jack Frost one last smile, and knowing what it would lead to, knowing what everything led to, nodded anyway.

"Yeah, see you around Jack." And then he was gone, in a blast of wind and the uproarus cheers of two small children. The light around me was leaving, crawling away, and I knew I couldn't linger any longer. Night wasn't a place I belonged. But as I jumped backwards off the tree, a burst of billions of silvery, sand-like grains shooting around to catch my feet, I thought that maybe, just this one time, even if it were just for these next two weeks, maybe I could belong here.

And if not belong, stay until the time came for me to move again, find another Fall somewhere else on this planet, chase the sun.

I was gone before a sliver of moonlight could fall, almost curiously, to the branch I'd rested on.


	2. A Vague Story

_-I'd like to give a giant thank-you for those who have already commented and given me a massive boost of confidence for this story. If you have any comments, ideas, or questions, feel free to leave a comment or PM me. This chapter got a bit long, sorry! But the next one will have a bit more action, I promise! This chapter will also delve a bit into the Guardians of Childhood book-relm, for those of you who haven't read them I suggest you do! Other than that, enjoy 3 -_

_-?-_

To observe something without interfering, day after day, can be a beautiful thing. It can show you things you never would have considered had you merely taken a detatched viewer's interest just one time. No, you had to stand there, you had to take notes, you had to see the way a person's face would move and when they came and left and how they spent their time. Everyday may not have been something new. It may become tedious. But not to me. Because I knew the prize that came with seeing a change in someone's daily schedual.

Most of the time it was small. Sitting somewhere new. Speaking to a stranger. But those small things held larger meanings, foreshadowed much more spectacular events, and usually precursored another change. The spot they left wouldn't be the same. I may be warmer, or colder. It may be occupied sooner or later after their departure. Many curious things could happen to it that told a story about the person who had sat there just moments before. Animals could lay on it. Leaves could fall on it.

A familiar moonbeam could look down upon it.

And that was all the prize I needed.

_-Jack Frost-_

My feet hadn't even touched the windowsill yet before something small, green, and chirping whizzed up to my face and instantly began barraging me with feathery, butterfly-like kisses. I laughed, nearly tumbling backwards out of the window and hooking the staff around a heavy chair leg to pull myself up.

"Woah, woah, Baby Tooth! Calm down, it's only been a few hours!" I eased the small, humanoid-hummingbird onto my hand, jumping down from the open window and into the warmer, darker, library-esque office that I'd heard North's booming laughter coming from.

"Baby Tooth, honor the uniform!" Tooth scolded with a smile, wagging a finger at the blushing little fairy. Baby Tooth buried her face in her hands and peeked up, offering me a little wave that I returned with my free pinkie, smirking as she squeaked again and fluttered quickly away and back to her mother. I looked around the room, wondering what all the laughter must have been about. Sandy was sleeping on a soft-looking, golden cloud of Sleep Sand above North's chair at the side of a dark brown table. North was holding onto one of the bookshelves stuffed with broken, ancient novels too old for me to decipher, belly-laughing so hard that the old furniture creaked and scraped.

And then I looked to the massive fireplace on the other side of the room, fire crackling and roaring around an ornately-decorated frame, and just kind of...looked, for a second. Looked at the revered, ancient martial-arts master, Guardian of Hope, who currently looked like a very, very large chia pet. And then nearly had an anurism from failing to hold back the uproarus laughter that escaped with a loud snort. I fell sideways and put all my weight on the staff, sides beginning to ache as Bunny shot me a look of pure malice that would have been funny, had all his fur not been standing completely on-end.

"Oi, I'll give ya something ta laugh about ya bloody-!"

"HAHAHAHOHOHOHO!" North's booming cut him off, the massive man throwing his head back and holding his massive stomach with one hand, the other still balancing him. Wiping tears from my face, feeling as if I didn't stop now I might seriously hurt my midsection, I gasped a few breaths and managed out,

"B-Bunny, you've never l-looked better! Is that a perm I see? Fabulous!" Bunny growled, but he growled as a 6,1 pile of pure fluff, and I bit down on my hand to keep from laughing again, trying to breathe evenly again while Tooth took control of the situation, fluttering quickly over to Bunny and turning to both North and me.

"Oh, stop it you two! Here Bunny, stop fussing." She scolded, this time seriously and pointing a harsh finger at North, feathers flaring. He cut himself off and swallowed another bout, clearing his throat and taking in a deep breath as Tooth began to smooth down Bunny's fur for him the same way I'd seen her fix some of her own feathers that got caught or wouldn't stay matted down. He huffed and crouched on his haunches, looking away from us as Tooth worked on his coat.

"Well, not like any of the Guardians of Childhood care, Jamie and Sophie are perfectly fine." I mused, jumping lightly and landing on the corner of the table. Of course, I was just starting this conversation to get to the good part. I'd practically drowned Brazil in snow in all the excitement pent up in my chest, pulsing and beating, hands wrapping tightly around the shepard's crook and feet swinging, feeling a smirk tugging painfully on my face that I couldn't stop.

"Ah! Yes, es right. You talk to them, dreams are kind?" North asked, walking over to the table and lightly moving the golden cloud around him and to the other side, pulling out and slamming down into his chair, the poor structure crying out in protest. I nodded, tucking one foot under my other thigh and explaining,

"I asked Jamie, nothing specific or anything, just a casual 'how's Sandy doing?'. He said his dreams were fine. In fact, he had this totally awesome one that I was a knight and there was this massive dragon about to-"

"As nice as that sounds," Bunny said grumpily, his coat now almost completely back to normal, Tooth working quickly and in a blurr of green, "If they don't notice a change in their dreams, then why did Manny? He don't make mistakes, mate." I opened my mouth to talk, but was cut off, bouncing a bit anxiously as North said in a bit more serious of a tone,

"Maybe es what Jack said. Changing of seasons can affect children, no?"

"But if Sandy's worried about it, shouldn't we be, too?" Tooth piped up, fluttering rapidly above a large arm chair as Bunny stood up and shook himself, rolling his shoulders and leaning against the side frame of the fireplace. Desperate to get out the more interesting news, I nodded to the sleeping Guardian and exclaimed,

"C'mon, Sandman's not worried! Look at him! Listen, it's probably nothing, and besides there's something even better-"

"Sandy, wake up friend! We have question!" North boomed, and it took every ounce of energy not to groan out loud. North bopped the bottom of the cloud that, upon Sandy's immediate awakening, dissipated and left the two-foot-tall Guardian to stand on the table, rubbing sleep from his golden eyes. "Jack says children don't notice change in dreams. What could this mean?"

Images flashed above Sandy's head that I didn't care enough to decipher, lolling my head back and looking at the ceiling while he and North had some one-sided conversation. As I traced the outline of elvin drawings on the ceiling above me with my eyes, my mind wandered.

I'd met other spirits before. A handful of spring, a few summer, one winter, many angry autumn ones. None of them wanting anything to do with me, which I could understand. Most of them were eons older than me, and their attitudes showed it. All of them were like Bunny pre-me becoming a Guardian: Grumpy, stoic, cranky, and way too obsessed with their own personal duties. It was like a lot of angry grandparents.

But she was different. She had _laughed_. With me, not at me. And she had smiled, and when I did agreeably cocky things she shot her own comebacks right back at me. And she was mysterious, and playful, and odd, and quirky, and...she had noticed me. That was the thing. She hadn't looked through me and seen my title, hadn't seen what other said about me, hadn't judged me based on the trouble I'd caused in the past. She noticed me. Green eyes that actually _saw_ me. And she seemed so light, like the weight of responsibility hadn't touched her.

And the more I thought about it, the more I hoped that she wasn't lying about coming back again. Because it had been 302 years since I started this thing, and while the Guardians were the closest thing I'd had to a family in all that time, I hadn't yet had a...a friend. And actual friend, like someone I could talk to and run around with and joke with. Tooth was kind, North was loving, Bunny was fun to poke at and Sandy was laid-back, but none of them were really...it wasn't a kind of friendship thing. It was a big family, a web that tied us together with love rather than titles. But it wasn't _friendship._

"Jack, what's wrong?" I jumped a bit at Tooth's concerned tone, suddenly falling back into the present and looking around. North had that look on his face like he'd asked me a question more than once, eyebrow raised and arms crossed. Sandy had a question mark above his head, Bunny was still looking grumpily at me, and Tooth was confused. Regaining the ability to speak, I nodded and said,

"Oh, yeah, what was the question?"

"I asked if you saw anything out-of-the-place while you were with young babushkas?" North asked, and I tried to surpress my grin. Perfect. I crossed my legs on the table, facing North, and comftorbly placed the staff across my lap. The words were waiting, jumpy and pushing, needing to be out in the air and release some pressure from my chest.

"Well, actually, there was something...someone." I said, and the puzzlement on my friends' faces prompted me to elaborate quickly, smile still plastered onto my face, "Actually, it was a girl-"

Two small hands grabbed the collar of my hoodie and yanked me sideways, forcing me to face a beaming Tooth, eyes wide and wings flickering in and out of visibility, audible cutting through the air as she pulled me slightly forward and exclaimed in an almost-hushed, excited and bubbly voice,

"Tell. Me. EVERYTHING!" I laughed nervously, taking her hands and slowly removing them from my jacket and then holding my own up in front of me defensively, feeling embarrasement coil in my stomach.

"Uh, it's not that kind of thing, I promise. I just ran into her while Jamie, Sophie and I were playing hide-and-seek." I explained quickly, Tooth growing no less excited and instead clenching her hands together, four more of her little faries swarming around her. I swore I saw a sly smirk from Bunny, and quickly tried to explain myself, "She was sitting in this tree and we started talking. She's like us...well, not exactly...actually she didn't say what she was, but she wasn't human, you know? She _looked _human, looked around my age.

"And she was super funny, had a sense of humor, unlike Fluffy over here." I nodded to Bunny and heard him begin to growl, but North cut him off.

"Es wonderful Jack! You made friend!" North boomed, and I breathed out a sigh of relief, feeling excitement replace where all those nerves had been. North was beaming, that proud-father kind of look with red cheeks and glittering eyes, Sandy beside him smiling sleepily. I nodded, hands relaxing on the staff.

"Yeah, she was super cool. Said she's gonna stay in Burgess for the next two weeks, until Fall ends. I was wondering if she could maybe...I dunno, hang out with us?" I offered it tentatively, half of me not even sure that she would stay, let alone want to be friends, and the other half worrying that maybe the Workshop was a place only for us to hang out around and gather. It had taken me multiple tried to break into the place before I was a Guardian, afterall...

"Oh, of course!" Tooth exclaimed, and something light burst in my chest, "I'd love another girl around here! And she sounds absolutely lovely!"

"Workshop can always use new guests! Especially guests who are friends of our Jack, no? Yes!" North exclaimed, beaming, Sandy giving a calm thumbs-up and smiling as wide as his half-asleep state would let him. I let out a happy laugh, something to relieve the pressure in my chest. It was taking time to get used to company, taking time to get used to people accepting me and things that I said. But everyone standing around me was smiling warmly, excited, as if they'd been waiting for this. I hadn't expected everyone to be so...welcoming. And they were, and now she could come to the Workshop and maybe-

"Oi, we don' even know the sheila's name! How can we let a stranger into the 'Shop?" Bunny's voice cut in, and I looked over, seeing him not so much angry as skeptical. Which was normal Bunny, and didn't make me worry too much. Bunny would be skeptical about air if he didn't breathe it, and Tooth, North, and Sandy were always able to bring him around on ideas. So, confidently, I pipped up,

"She said her name was Alice. Besides, you're the only strange one here."

And it was as if the entire room stilled.

In fact, it almost did. Tooth, a hand going to her mouth, touched down on the floor for the first time in weeks, wings stilling and folding onto her back, even the faries stopping on a large chair. Bunny's eyes widened, his fur bristled, and he took a step forward, mouth slightly open. Confused, furrowing my brow, I looked to North for some sort of explination. But even he was having the same reaction, eyebrows first dipping and then raising, caught between concern and surprise, eyes flickering from the others to me, and then to Sandy. Sandy, who normally was half-asleep, looked extremely alert. His eyes were open completely, he stood at his full height, but he did not look at me. Instead he looked up at North.

My heart dropped.

"Jack..." Tooth tried, and I looked at her, head being thrown in every direction, but she didn't continue, just looking from me to North and Sandy. Panic gripped my chest, my breathing began to grow shallow, and my hands gripped the staff again. This wasn't what I wanted. This was what I'd expected, to an extent. They were surprised. They were...shocked. Scared, almost. Hints of something like it at least. And I didn't know why, but I knew that it was bad. Very bad.

"What? Why's everyone looking like that?!" I exclaimed, shooting my question at North, when Bunny spoke.

"North." Was all he said, but it seemed to be enough. Nicholas St. North looked at Sandy one more time, the smaller Guardian glancing up, concerned but far-off, thinking to himself, and then, slowly, to me. The knot in my stomach tightened, tensing my chest, breath coming thickly through my throat. I had done something wrong, or they had done something wrong. Something was wrong. North had never looked at me this way before, not since Easter two years ago, not since they...

"Jack," North said, accent heavy and voice low, a darkness falling over his eyes, temples almost tensing, "What does...What does Alice look like?" He stumbled over her name a bit, and I felt the hairs on my neck stand up. This wasn't good. This wasn't okay. But I told myself that maybe they had someone different in mind. Maybe they were acting this way because a different Alice had done something. Alice was a common name. So I told them.

"Uh...scruffy red hair, kinda pale...she had, um, green eyes, and this dark red sweater. Looked like she was maybe a little older than me...really nice." I added the last part almost in desperation, the ending coming out strained and quiet because, as I'd spoken, North had looked to Sandy for a reaction. And it wasn't the one I was hoping for. The normally calm, jolly little man looked almost heart-broken. He looked like I'd just given him the most terrible news I could give someone, his eyes cast down and shaking his head almost imperceptibly.

"Sandy, es...same one?" North asked, but even I, with no knowledge of what was happening, knew the answer. He nodded.

"Oh, _Jack_." Tooth whispered, but I didn't look to her, heard the sadness in her voice and couldn't handle it. I'd messed up. After two years, I'd messed up _again_. But this didn't seem fair. I had a friend. I found someone who didn't turn away from me. And now they were acting like she was some sort of...monster.

"What? What's going on? Why is everyone acting this way?!" I demanded, voice teetering on hysteria, knuckles painfully tightening around the staff. I felt frost spread, the untamed kind, the sporatic kind, the kind I wasn't able to stop because everyone was looking at me like this and I didn't know what I had done this time.

"Jack...I do not want you near Alice again. You stay away, understood?"

I couldn't breathe. Everything constricted into a tunnel of noise and the echoing of North's voice. My entire body went numb.

"...What...?" I heard myself ask, felt myself tense to the point of breaking.

"Es story for another time, Jack-"

"Tell me now!" I snapped myself out of my own tunnel-vision, breaking away the film in front of my face, shattering a numbed silence in the room and making everyone flinch back, even Sandy. But I didn't stop, and I didn't know why, I just couldn't. I couldn't stop shouting, I couldn't understand why, I couldn't stop the steady spread of frost across the desk beneath me. "Tell me why I can't see her! She was nice to me, she laughed with me! She _saw _me!"

I saw something behind North's eyes flicker, and the tone in the room changed. A crushed, shattered look crossed North's face, the seriousness gone, now just a look of unimaginable pity. I wanted to cringe away from it, wanted to leave this room now, the air too thin, my chest heaving and arms shaking.

"Jack-"

"I just want a friend!" I said almost pathetically, and before I could see the look on North's face get worse I stood, kicking back off the desk and sweeping out of the room through the window I'd entered from. I heard Bunny's voice call after me, but I didn't register it. Really, I didn't think of anything but getting away. Not from them, not from the room, not even really from the Workshop. Just away from the situation. Away from being told that I couldn't go near Alice. Away from not knowing why. Not knowing why again.

The wind held onto me when I lost focus, carrying me along and whipping furiously around me, snow and ice picking up off the ground and swirrling through the air at a rapid, almost painful pace, but the snow didn't bother me. I didn't register the screaming winds passed my ears, didn't think of the curling clouds above, of the darkening landscape. My eyes were closed, my body tight, my jaw clenched, and thinking of Alice and how it hadn't been that long of a conversation but I'd found someone and they saw me and it was okay and...and...

And why couldn't it be okay? Just one time?

Like a parent laying down a small, distraught child into their bed, the wind gently threw my feet from under me and placed me slowly down into a snowbank, slowing itself and stilling the tornadoes of ice and snow all around me. I couldn't see, curling in and glaring down, arms wrapped around my legs. I breathed heavily, not able to get air to my lungs, not able to think clearly. Images of their faces flashed through my head, all because I'd said I made a new friend. And then I couldn't see her. I couldn't have a friend, because I was Jack Frost, because I wasn't allowed to have happy things like that, because I broke everything. Because I messed everything up, every single time, and the one time I got it right...

...The one time I got it right, and now they all looked at me like I'd done some kind of horrific crime. I imagined Bunny saying something along the lines of 'I told you so', and Tooth looking crushed, and North dissapointed, and Sandy sad, and I'd done all of it. I'd messed it up and I didn't know why. One second it was fine, the next it wasn't. Why? _Why?_

I didn't know how long I sat there, half-buried in the snow drift, looking at my lap, or how exactly far I'd flow away. The only thing that told me I was still near the Workshop was a footstep right behind me, and then another next to me. There was the sound of a large expanse of snow being crushed down, and then a shifting of a large frame. I didn't move as North sat next to me, just kept looking down, afraid of what I might see on his face. He was only quiet for a moment, and then without a word, he told me.

"Was many, many eons ago. This planet was new, we were not yet Guardians, and things were as wild as they wished to be. Nothing control elements, no one help to bring light to the darkness. Not here. The story es so old that we know only from the stories Sandy has experianced, and from him others have told and re-told. Some have it right, some not exactly. But what we know we know from Sandy, and he was there for good part of it.

"You know stories of the night sky, how space and the dense darkness was over run with nightmare men, fearlings, the beings Pitch used to manipulate children's nightmares years ago. A very, very long time ago, there was war. Sandy was there, he saw it all. He was, as he puts it, a bystander to the goings-on of war. You see Sandy was here before us, before even Man in Moon, and was up there before he chose to stay down here and continue to protect children when Pitch destoryed the planets in other galaxies.

"Towards end, when Pitch had wrought all the evil he could, brought down galaxies and spread fear through the world, there was one force left to stand against him."

I knew this much, had been told stories of the Dark Ages by North, and had read books on the quest of of the nightmare men and the fearlings to engulf everything in fear. I knew that Pitch had tried to get to Manny and failed, and that he ended up here. But my knowledge was vague, just a bunch of strung-together fairy tales.

"Man in Moon was child, little baby unable to defend himself. But, like us all, he had parents. Mother and Father. Sandy said he had heard of them, heard of this family that dared stand up against the darkness. Tsar and Tsarina, and their baby son, and handful of men willing to fight an impossibly large army of shadows and darkness. They would lose, but Sandy said he wanted to go, said he too would fall trying to rid the world of shadows."

"Where does Alice come into this?" I asked, voice unsteady as I listened, looking up at North through the corner of my eye. He paused, let out a deep breath, and nodded.

"This es where story gets a bit...interesting. Follow me, yes?" I nodded, and he continued. "The soldiers were not the only ones who stood to fight the shadows. There were others, another race of beings that could stand up to the darkness, that fought alongside the soldiers as valiantly as the greatest warriors. They had no names.

"They were the stars, the light in the sky. They were celestial beings. They gave the stars their shine, and wielded the power of pure light, of hope and joy and bravery and happiness. It flowed through them, and it was the most useful weapon against the darkness. But even this was not enough. They fell with the soldiers, until there was one left. This one was with Man in Moon when Pitch attacked, was Manny's protector...was _supposed_ to be his protector."

"...What happened?" I asked, not because I wanted to know, but because I needed to. Needed to see if it was as bad as everyone made it seem. Was as terrible as I thought it might be. Because I knew who North was saying this being was, and it was all getting a bit hard to believe.

"...She abandoned him. Sandy was there to see a soldier place young Man in Moon into an escape ship and send him off, a trail of fire behind him. The soldiers, with some force of nature Sandy said he could not remember quite clearly, a last brute-effort that has gone down as the greatest victory in the history of the Dark Ages, the soldiers drove back Pitch's forces. Sandy did not remember much after, just a large commotion and then a still, numb darkness.

"Man in Moon ended up on Moon, but when Sandy went to retrieve his parents, they were gone, a casualty to the last battle of the Dark Ages. Pitch was on Earth. Man was on Moon. And Sandy went to follow Pitch."

"...She wasn't there?"

"No...she abandoned those she was supposed to fight for, Jack. She had not gone with Man in Moon. She was not in battle. Sandy found her, years later, on Earth. And she ran from him, ran because she knows what she had done, knows the damage she had caused by running, by cowardly act-"

"What did she do?" I cut him off, biting my lip as North's voice got darker and angrier before I cut him off, as if she had done something horrible to him instead of MiM... He paused, gathered himself, and continued in a tone too sad for me to want to heard,

"She abandoned them, Jack. Had she stayed, Man in Moon would not have lost parents. She orphaned a child, a child who had to grow up alone, not knowing why for the longest time." I cringed, clenching my jaw to keep from making a noise. My hands gripped the staff and I closed my eyes. Alone, confused. I knew that feeling as well as I knew my own heartbeat.

"It has become the most despicable act in our history. She left them, and now lives here, on this planet, with no remorse, no punishment for her actions. Es why we can't let you be near her, Jack. She es dangerous, traitor. We could not live if she did anything to our Jack." I felt a large hand across my back, tender and warm. And I was supposed to feel better, supposed to understand and nod.

But I didn't. Because I couldn't imagine the girl in the tree as someone who orphaned children.

"North...she was just a child. She was friendly and...you said the story was vague. Sandy couldn't see the whole thing, it must have been chaos. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe-"

"Jack. Sandy es not wrong. Alice es here, Man in Moon es still up there."

"If he hadn't been, we wouldn't be here. None of us would be."

"Jack-"

"I need to talk to her. I need to see what really happened, North, because if you met her you wouldn't think this was...that this..." I looked up at him, desperatly, but saw a resigned look on his face. And not the good kind of resigned. And it was a look I hated to see on him, on North who had treated me like family, who had taken me in and invited me to the Workshop whenever I wanted, who had done everything he could to make me happy and loved. And I felt as if I were causing this pain he was in.

"...Can I stay in the Workshop for a few days? I just...need to think somewhere familiar." I asked, and North's eyes instantly lit up with warmth and relief. The hand on my back pressed a bit, affectionatly, and the large man nodded.

"Of course Jack, Workshop es home! Come now, let us put buisiness behind us for now. I will get Phil to make coco, es freezing outside!" North exclaimed, standing and pulling me to my feet as well. I declinded mentioning that he did live at the North Pole, so the cold shouldn't be a problem for him, but kept my mouth shut. In fact, I didn't speak for a long time, not until Tooth asked if everything was okay, and then lied and said that yes, it was, and that no, I wouldn't see Alice again.

Because I would. Because I had to. Because I knew what it was like to have people blame you for something they knew nothing about.

Because, deep down inside, I really did want a friend. And I felt like she wanted one, too. And because I'd promised to come back.


	3. A Different Danger

_-Thank you all for your fantastic feedback. As always, feel absolutely free to PM me or leave a comment (they really do make me feel good!) if you have any ideas or thoughts on the story so far. I'm open for anything and love discussing things such as this! With that being said, there's more action in this chapter, so sit back and enjoy 3 -_

_-Alice-_

"You're going to have to let go eventually." I said to the tree branch that was currenly holding my sleeve captive, the sharp limb caught in the frayed hem of the sweater's arm and holding me at an odd angle, one foot on the ground and the other up for balance, my arm hyper-extended. I'd been standing like this for about an hour. I could, by all means, have crushed the branch with stardust, but that seemed creul and unusual to a tree that was doing nothing more than being there. I tried wiggling my sleeve again, but only heard a few more threads pop, making what used to be a thumb-sized hole now about the size of two fingers. I huffed.

I'd tried hovering near it to get a better angle, but even using my other hand to try and unknot it, the branch had somehow formed an impenatrable web around the fibres. So now I stood, just looking around, having nothing better to do really. My sneaker ground into the thin, inch-deep layer of snow on the ground, and I frowned. The snow hadn't increased in three days. Three days since Jack Frost had been here. And granted, that wasn't a lot of time to be away from a place, but it began to grow in the back of my mind as something that maybe I should take as a hint. That maybe he did think I was odd, afterall. Or worse.

Much worse.

I shook my head, trying to dislodge the dark thoughts there. No, Jack didn't seem like the kind of person to know anyone who would know the story, nor the kind of person who would blindly hate someone. There was that rare innocence about him, the kind I'd only ever watched in children as they made new friends and told each other stories. Except, with Jack, it hadn't really looked like a state of being. It looked like...almost...a force of nature, captured in his spirit.

"Okay, now this is getting ridiculous. You really are going to have to let go, or I'll be forced to remove myself the hard way." I said to the tree, which continued to stand as stoicly as ever. I sighed, and resigned myself. Raising my non-captive hand, I playfully fluttered my fingers, tiny bursts of silver and white light popping out from between and above them, particles swirrling around above and dancing as if they'd been still for too long. With a sigh and a shrug, I threw my hand above me and the stardust followed, colliding with the strings of my sweater.

With the muted sound of ripping fabric, my arm fell down beside me and the tree gave nothing more than a small shudder, the stardust dancing back around once more before stilling and dropping down to the ground, like a different type of snow. I took a moment to mourn the loss of a small portion of my sleeve, now no longer a hole but a large chunk as if a small animal had taken a bite from it.

"This sweater was difficult to come by. Boo on you." I mused to the tree, frowning and looking down at my sleeve again...

Until something flashed across the treeline to my left.

My head snapped up and I froze, ears perking up as the sound of snow being disturbed broke through the silence, accompanied by another, almost sharp sound, like the sound of hard-edged stones grating together quickly. It was dark, that much I could tell, and far too fast for me to see clearly. But I'd walked these forests for months, felt their environment, fell into their daily mantra.

This was not part of this forest. Not at all. It's presence, however fleeting, changed the atmosphere around me. This wasn't some foreign animal like a house cat that had gotten loose. I'd lived for an insurmountable number of years, eons that stretched back before time was a concept in people's minds, and I'd seen more in half that time than most saw in two lifetimes. I remembered everything..._almost everything_...and whatever this was resonated through my bones as something entirely not good, putting it mildly. It was not supposed to be here. No, not at all.

"I'm having one of those 'I really should leave this well alone' kind of feelings." I mused to the tree. It didn't move.

_-Jack-_

They wouldn't mind it, really. If they didn't know, and if things didn't work out, no one would be there to scold me or say 'I told you so'. All I had to do was slip out, and when I got back if anyone asked I'd say I was freezing North America, or wanted to check on Jamie and Sophie again. Yeah, easy, okay. Alright. Perfect.

I bounced nervously on my feet, the cold surface of the Globe keeping me in place while I looked up through the hole in the roof, the perfect circle that Manny would use to communicate with us all if anything major happened. Now, though, the sun just shone down and lit the workshop below, busy noises colliding in my head as I gripped the staff and mentally prepped myself for something that, in all honesty, shouldn't be this hard.

I went out on my own all the time. No one asked where I went, they all just assumed it was to mess around and cause snowdays, to play with Jamie and his friends, or just to get away from the sometimes-suffocating atmosphere of the Workshop. This time would be no different. So why was I standing here, fear tripping in my ribcage, nerves making me jittery? They wouldn't know unless I told them. And I wouldn't. So why?...

Inside I knew. A voice in my head was whispering it to me. But I ignored it. I shook it away. But it persisted.

_They'll know. Don't forget, last time you thought they wouldn't find out, either. What happened last time? You ruined Easter. You destroyed childrens' belief. You made a mess. Just like you will now. Just like-_

"Oi! Frostbite, the bloody hell ya doin' up there?" I jumped a bit, as if I could be startled in the chaos that shifted below me on the working floor. Bunny stood there, arms crossed and an eyebrow raised, tapping one large foot on the ground and giving me that kind of look that shouldn't have been as nerve-wracking as it was. I laughed in default and scratched the back of my head, shrugging.

"Oh, ya know, just looking around. View's nice up here." I mused, smirking and swinging a foot in front of me. Bunny rolled green eyes and shook his head, but I caught the smirk. The kind of smirk I could catch on one of his good days, if I hadn't already done something agreeably stupid or North hadn't gotten on his nerves with the whole 'Christmas over Easter' thing they had going on. I took a sort of pride in managing to take his stoic frown and fix it up a little bit, make him seem almost happier, lighter. Part of it was my calling, my center. But I liked to think that, even if I wasn't the Guardian of Fun, that maybe I could still make the grumpy Pooka even the slightest bit amused.

"Why don't you- ARGH!"

Everything turned dark, but I could still feel the world around me, feel that the darkness that engulfed me wasn't impenetrable, hadn't consumed me. It had, for a moment, blinded me. My body jolted, the ground beneath my feet lunged upwards and I was thrown through the air, body and mind forgetting that I had every capability of catching myself. It lasted a second, maybe not even that, but I felt how far I'd gone and how little time I'd have before I hit the floor, _hard._

"Jack!"

My mind snapped back into place and my arm shot out, fingers painfully clenched around the staff and something latching onto it, right next to mine, and jerking me in mid-air. My vision spotted, fuzzy blackness lining the corners and bleeding into the center as I violently shook my head, feeling myself being pulled up, but not exactly how or why yet. My head was trying to catch up with reality, and I felt like I'd just been demolished by an 18-wheeler. I felt something wrap a tight grip around my forearm and, with a quiet grunt, pulled me over the railing where I promptly stumbled and landed flat on my butt.

"Jack! Jack, mate, ya a'right? Speak to me!" Australian accent. Check. Furry hands? Assuming so. Concern? Strange. Hm.

"Bunny?" I asked, just to make sure.

"Who the bloody hell else would it be?!" Ah, yes. That's Bunny. Good.

"I heard a scream, what's wrong?!" Tooth's voice burst into my conciousness, squeezing my eyes shut and then blinking them open, my head slowly falling back into place, vision a bit blurry and only registering a moving blob of green and gold. Hands gripped my face and shook it a bit, which did absolutely nothing for my vision and gave me a splitting migrane, clenching my teeth and shooting my hands up to the ones on my face.

"Ooouch..."I groaned, and heard a gasp.

"Oh, Jack! I'm so sorry!" I blinked again, looking up until everything slid into one clear image. Tooth was hovering over me, face creased with worry and wringing her hands, as if she just couldn't keep still. Some part of that was kind of funny to me, and maybe it was brain damage caused by whatever had just happened, but I smirked and mused in a slightly dizzy voice,

"It's alright, Tooth, just uh...give me a sec." She floated away, but only so far, making sure that she was still hovering over my feet. As the world began to come back into focus again and I processed what had just happened, the rest of the gang burst onto the overlook. "Oh, hey, cool, everyone's here. One of you mind helping me up?" I asked, and from behind me two familiar paws gripped my elbows and hefted me up.

"Easy now, ankle bita'." Bunny's voice came, and I nodded, blinking and looking around. Bunny was still giving me a checking look, making sure I was okay in a rare moment of actual concern, Tooth was zipping over to fly beside him...

A hand flew to her mouth and her eyes grew wide, gasping and shooting backwards a few inches. Something had drawn her attention away from me, something behind me. When I turned, seeing North and Sandy with almost similar looks as I passed glances, it took a moment for me to process what I was seeing. There was no mistaking it. It was huge. And it was familiar. Bone-achingly familiar. I'd seen it before, far too close...but there was something else in it.

Maybe I was the only one who saw, because my immediate reaction wasn't like the others. But there was something there, something that hadn't been there before, or maybe something missing. Which was ridiculous. I mean, black sand can only look a certain way, all dark and grainy and consuming. It protruded from a spot on the glove like a spear, a spike sharpened to a hair-thin tip, glad that it probably hadn't formed while I was standing on it. It was dangerous and it was corrupt and it was the loss of hope from happy dreams.

It looked just the same as it always did. And yet it didn't.

"Manny was right..." Aster breathed from behind me.

"Of couse he vas right!" North insisted seriously, his voice switching back to that uncomforting dark tone, walking quickly in front of us and almost knocking me over as he did. I stood for a second, surprised at North's sudden change in behavior, watching as the usually jolly man stormed across the overlook and down the stairs, calling out harshly to the yetis in a Russian accent that wasn't his usual. It was course, and it was angry...and it was almost a bit scary.

"Well, don' just stand there, ya sad sacks! We gotta move!" Aster exclaimed, brushing past me and down the stairs on all fours, until he met up with North halfway down. I jumped into the air, the sudden intensity of the situation hitting me. The sounds around us turned from busy toy-making to shouts and orders and yetis opening doors, two familiar ones that would lead to the hallway where the sley was kept. I flew down the stairs, hearing a pair of flitting wings and the gentle tinkling sound of Sandy 'speaking' behind me.

"Wait! Woah, we don't even know where this thing is!" I tried to reason, but without even glancing my way North shoved a large finger towards the Globe.

"Look on _Globe_, Jack!" He snapped, and I was about to snap back that I knew exactly what was on the Globe, and that it had almost knocked the freaking frost out of me, until I did what he said. I looked at the Globe, and then it clicked. I stilled in the air, Tooth almost running into me on her way down the stairs, Sandy stopping. A chill ran through my veins, not the kind I liked, not the kind I was used to. This one was painful. My heart sank.

It was like a reverse arrow. Like someone had taken the point of the black pillar and shoved it right through that point on the Globe. A familiar point. A place I'd been a few days ago.

"Jamie, Sophie..."I whispered, and then my eyes flew wide and my breath caught in my throat.

_Alice._

I didn't have time to turn and see the look in Sandy's eyes, catch a glimpse of worry, of regret, and fear. I didn't know what Sandy was thinking. None of us did. But maybe if we had, we could have avoided a few things. But the small Guardian remained silent, and I remained oblivious, the pair of us rushing down the stairs to join the others, setting off for a small street in Burgess.

_-Alice-_

It dissapeared somewhere in a backyard that bordered closely to the treeline that, if you went back far enough, led to the nature park where I'd seen children play after school. I'd managed to follow the black blur, silently through the trees and the winding maze of homes and alleyways, never quite getting a good enough look at it to make out a figure, but just enough to catch a glimpse of something red in the front of it. Red, and evil-looking, if you could describe a blur as evil. I'd followed it until now, when it rounded a corner and I, just a few seconds aftewards, couldn't see it anymore.

Couldn't _feel_ it anymore. All this time and I'd felt, somewhere in a non-physical part of me, whatever that thing had been. I panted now, the feeling gone, and I was almost happy about that. It hadn't exactly felt like it was drawing me in, it felt like...like it was resonating. Like a part of me that wasn't mine, that had never been mine, or if it had been no longer was. And it just felt...dark. Not dark the physical representation, not dark like the genre. The emotion. The feeling of being around something that was an embodiment of dark and shadows and evil.

But there was nothing. Not now, anyway, other than the darkened back of a house and the silence of a forest still blanketed in a thin layer of snow. There weren't even tracks in the snow before me, new and crisp as if nothing had passed through here. I straightened up and cracked my back, shaking my head and still trying to catch my breath. _Maybe I should start walking instead of sitting in trees. _I thought to myself, swallowing while my throat went dry. I blinked in the dying light, cursing myself under my breath. And now it had begun to get dark, and I wasn't even paying attention. If I hurried, now wishing even harder that I invested in a bit of cardio every now and again, I might have made it back somewhere safe before nightfall-

There was something behind me. Alarms shot off in my head and across my skin, suddenly erupting in warning as prickles and hairs shot up down my spine, heart pounding hard against my ribcage as if urging me to leave, to get away, to move forward. To run. But this feeling was different from the one I'd just felt. It was dark, it was very, very, very dark, and it was resonating from a time long, long ago that I hadn't the mind to remember. And it was familiar. It was unwelcoming.

I spun around with a gasp, hands up and ready to protect myself.

"My, my, now _that's _something I haven't felt in awhile."

I froze, my right foot half-back and ready to run, ready to scream, ready to fight back... And yet all I did was stand there and look at this man that was, from what I could immediately gather, was not a human man at all. He was quite certainly something else entirely. He was grey-skinned, hair black and jutting out behind him, eyes a sharp and almost alive silver-and-gold, fading into one another as the light shifted across them, lips thin enough to be a line, standing much taller and I. His cloak was black, and he was leaning over me, hands behind his back, eyes piercing down at me hungrily, mouth smiling in anything but warmth.

And this was what I'd been feeling. Not the victimizing sensation I got as he continued to look at me as if I were a meal, as if I were prey, as cliche as it sounded. Not the feeling that his eyes were looking far past mine, digging into something inside of my mind, uprooting it and sending a flood of something stifling through my veins. Not that at all. I looked at him, and for a moment something clicked. A lightswitch was flicked, but no light went on. But it was there, it was ready, and yet I couldn't see it.

"Who are you?" I demanded, trying not to sound so incredibly small. I was eons old, and I wanted to speak like it, especially as amusement danced across sharp features, the face of someone who could switch from menecing to condescending and back in the snap of his fingers. Unfortunately for me, I had the ribcage and vocal chords of a twelve-year-old boy, and my voice came out a bit too quiet, a bit too unsteady.

"Oh dear, I'll let that little comment slip." He said with a voice too smooth, too articulately sharp. He took a step forward, and I a step back, holding up a hand and glaring at him as best I could. He merely looked at it and quirked an eyebrow, looking like he wanted to scoff. "Oh, dear me, how horribly terrified I am of such a little girl. Love, you clearly don't know who I am..." He trailed off, and I saw something darker shift into his eyes...

...And for a second I could have sworn I saw a flicker of weakness. The punctuated strength he was trying to exude was stiped, something was blocking it, but it was only for a moment. A quick flash, a tense of his jaw, and then he covered it with a smooth, confident, threatening chuckle.

"But you will once I'm through with you. You see, it's been awhile since I've been out and about, and my my, you just exude my favorite past-time: _Fear_."

And to that, I took offense.

"I'm not scared." I stated simply, still glaring at him and gathering energy around my hand, feeling ready and tensing inwardly, in case this man do anything. His jaw flickered, tensing and untensing just as fast, and his eyes narrowed, the smile now more venomous than before, and he chuckled.

"Lying will do you no good, child. But by all means, fight back! It's so much more fun that way." He insisted, nodding to my hand that was half-hidden in the sweater sleeve. Part of me wanted to smirk at the challenge, the way he had presented it, and the other half wanted to coil away from him, wanted to shake the feeling off of me that had not left since he arrived. He brought a hand from behind him, bringing it just beside his face and flicking a finger, something black swirrling from his finger tip and ghosting along his face.

Something familiar. Something much darker than it should be.

I never got to get a closer look at it, not in that instance, anyway. There was a massive wind from behind me, nearly toppling me over, and I spun around quickly, my arm fanning out in front of me. Out of instinct, already extremely on-edge, a more intense wave of Stardust swept in front of me, glistening in the fading sunlight and shooting out at whatever had jumped up behind me. There was a flash that normally accompanied a hit, but then there was a voice, too, and a flash of something brown, and then the Stardust was shooting away from the target and dissipating in the air.

And then,

"Jack!" I exclaimed, and heard the man behind me make a noise, though whether it was meant for me or Jack I couldn't tell. Whether it was surprise or distaste, I couldn't tell. Because I hadn't seen Jack in days, and I had just attacked him. "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to...well, yes I meant to, but you snuck up behind me and so did this guy and-"

"Frostbite! Don't bloody rush ahead like that!" A thickly-accented voice broke through my stumbling apology, Jack, already looking flustered, dropping into a look of dread as he turned. I hadn't seen a hole open in the ground, but I saw what jumped out of it. A rabbit, or maybe even a bunny, on two legs. In fact, maybe not even a bunny at all. I couldn't tell.

It looked like a bunny, but spoke like a man, standing straight and towering over Jack, something slung across a blue-furred chest and eyes a bright, angry green. An angry green that glared at Jack for a second. And then they were on the man behind me, and they were furious, and his face was scrunched up like he was about to attack, as if he knew the man.

And then, almost in a passing thought, they were on me.

I'd never been good at reading expressions. Even on children, whose entire spectrum of feelings seemed to be on display on their small faces, were sometimes tricky for me. But this one read loud and clear. It shot through me, though I'd seen it countless times, felt its impact, and it never got easier. It tore at me worse than whatever that man had just done. It dug deep into me and clawed at my chest, it wrapped its hands around my head and squeezed.

It was shock. Then it was realization. And then it was revulsion.

"...You." He almost growled, and I couldn't take in a breath. I couldn't move, really, fists clenching and Stardust ghosting up and down my sleeves, almost in an attempt to calm me, as if the individual granuals felt my discomfort, felt my misery, and were doing their best to ease some of it. The large bunny took a step, a predatorial step, forward, and just when I thought he was going to strike out Jack stepped between us.

"Bunny, stop!" He demanded, and my eyes flickered between him and 'Bunny'. At least that part was clear now. How conveniantly named. His eyes flew to the boy, and then back to me, switching as he demanded,

"Jack, North said-"

"Vat did I say? Have we found-" A thick Russian accent was cut off by a delicate gasp, and even more people came into view from around the side of the house. Three more. My breathing was labored, and the stardust was now more frantic, trembling across my skin beneath the heavy sleeves of the sweater.

A large man with a white beard, wearing a heavy Russian winter jacket, two strange swords in his hands. A woman, beautiful and covered from head to toe in glossy feathers ranging from dark blues to light greens and golds, transparent wings making a slight sound as they flickered behind her. A man, small, not even three feet maybe. And it was him that I stumbled back from, taking two steps and forgetting the man behind me. Because I knew of this man. I had never seen him until now. But I knew him.

And I knew he knew me.

His hair was golden, sticking out at odd angles. His robe was golden, the cloud he rode made of something I knew, something that shared a kinship with the energy running through my body. His eyes were golden. And they were large. And they were scared. And I had never seen this man in my life, but he had seen me in a moment that I did not remember, and that had changed everything. That had made everything how it was. This man knew a truth, or part of a truth, that I could never know. But he did. _He knew._

"Jack...that is..." The Russian man said, and I looked back to him, and suddenly realized who I was surrounded by. They stood in front of me, in a line blocking my way, a faint recognition somewhere inside of me that the man was still behind me, the feeling still there. And it clicked in my head that I knew each of these individuals. I knew who they were. I knew who they served. These were the Guardians.

And then I saw how Jack was standing with them, looking back at me with a worried look, giving a desperate half-smile. I heard how they spoke to him. Everything was chaos in my head, and I felt...unstable. Panic ripped through me, pulled at me, pushed me, tugged me, begged me to leave and go hide and that this was a terrible idea, following that thing was a terrible idea, trying to be friends with anything was a bad idea. Because he was one of them. Of course he was. He didn't know yet, but he would, and then he would look at me like the rest of them were.

Because Jack was a Guardian.

"Oh, wonderful. I thought the rest of you wouldn't want to join us. I'm afraid I haven't made any tea, my apologies." The man behind me mused, tone too calm and dripping with sarcasm. A part of me actually latched onto that, tried to stabalize with that thought it was not directed at me. And then I felt something small in my chest uncoil, softly, as a few of their horrified glances left me and turned to the man behind me. I had to stop myself from taking a step back, reminding myself that this man had just tried to attack me, maybe.

But between him and them, I'd take the tall, silver-eyed man.

"Pitch...and you...I shoulda bloody known that if she was hangin' around you two'd be upta somethin'!" Bunny's voice shook with rage, and I couldn't even shake my head from paralyzing fear.

"_Excuse me_? I am the Boogeyman! I am the King of Nightmares! You think I'd associate with a tiny, albeit impressively infamous, traitor?"

I felt like I'd been struck in the chest. And there was that word again. It glued to my ribs, it sunk in my gut, and I fought with everything I had not to shut my eyes to it, to their glances, to Bunny's furious glare, to Jack's desperate look of sympathy and anger. I didn't shut my eyes because part of me, the instinctive part that still felt the burns, the scratches, the words from times when I was less prepared, that part told me not to. That now was no the time.

And it was a very good thing. Because, had I close my eyes, I wouldn't have seen the black mass rise up from the ground, the feeling slamming back into me, as the creature aimed itself at Bunny's back. I wouldn't have seen it tense, wouldn't have seen the now-horse-like creature covered in sharp, black-plated armor reel back and coil in. If my eyes were closed, I'd have missed the look of hunger in the bleedingly red eyes.

But my eyes were open.

A flash cut through whatever Bunny was about to say, and for a second no one could see. But I could feel it.

And it wasn't done.


	4. A Series of Unfortunate Events

_-Sorry it took awhile to get this chapter out! This one involves a bit of violence and language, so younger viewers be cautioned. Enjoy 3 -_

_-Alice-_

There was a pocket of silence, the flash dying out and my hands outstreached, panting and shaking because I had no idea what was happening, just that it wasn't good, and it didn't involve me. But I was here, and so were the Guardians and this man behind me who was decidedly neither on their side nor mine. I curled my fingers inward towards my palm, trying to stabilize my hands in case the creature got up, in case it re-formed. There was nothing in that spot, not even a grain of black sand or a shred of bright orange from coal-like eyes. Just a scattering of quickly-dissolving silver powder, and a toppled-over Aster who had not gotten hit, but looked as if he just had.

His eyes were wide, flickering from the spot on the ground to me, and for one terrible second I feared he thought the attack was aimed at him. His eyes were wide, flickering from the spot where the monstrous black horse had just reared up to attack him, and then to me, where I stepped back once more and feared that what I had just done would make everything a thousand times worse, would just prove that I wasn't supposed to be here, near them, near anyone. The large rabbit who I knew as the Easter Bunny from tales children told each other, tensed and pushed himself back up to his feet, and I braced myself for anything...

Except Jack stepped between us just as Bunny was about to turn back to me. He held the staff aloft, two hands gripping it tightly, looking all around him with a look that made him seem...older. Older than I knew the young spirit actually was. There was something dark laced in his eyes, something embedded that I couldn't remember seeing so entirely in a spirit so small.

"What was that? Where'd it go?" Jack asked, and something heavy flew from my chest. I visibly sighed, body relaxing if just a little, tiny bit. Jack had seen it, too, or at the very least he was pretending to see it, knowing that if the Guardians had thought I was attacking Bunny out of nowhere then...then the entire situation would have erupted into chaos, and I wouldn't have known what to do. I shook my head.

"I don't know...it looked like a horse, but not made of flesh and blood. More like...I don't know, almost like black sand." I tried to recall the mere blur that I'd seen in detail.

"A horse made of black sand? Wonda' where we've heard that one before." Bunny's voice came from behind Jack, but when I dared to look beyond him I saw that his tone, full of accusation and dripping with hatred, wasn't aimed at me. In fact, none of the the Guardians were looking at me. Not even Jack. They were looking at the man behind me.

I spun around, almost forgetting his presence there.

He wasn't even paying the least bit of attention. Instead, eyebrows pulled in a bored concentration, lips thin and pushed up into a frown, he was scraping some dirt from one fingernail with his thumbnail. He looked like a bored student in a math class, oblivious and nonchalant, actually bored with the happenings around him. I half-expected him to start tapping his foot.

And maybe it was because of the stress crushing my chest, or the fear, the worry, pressure all around me, maybe it was the situation I'd thrown myself into, maybe it was all of it put into one. But, for a moment, I almost laughed. He was comically uninterested. The only thing that stopped me was that, the moment I turned and registered him standing there, he looked up, as if tuned in on me.

I stopped, fists clenching out of reflex...but he didn't look at all as hostile as the others had. In fact, he looked almost...indifferent. His eyes shone no hatred, no accusation, no sympathy or opinion. They were, in all honesty, filled with an uncertain darkness. A deepness that was paralyzing on the outside, but there was something beneath them. Something darker, working quickly and silently. I couldn't move.

"Hm? I'm sorry, were we talking about me, or this little legend here?" He asked, voice smooth and indifferent, airy and mocking. His eyes still never left me.

"Who the bloody hell do ya think?" Bunny's voice snapped from somewhere behind me.

"Tsk, tsk, such language. Although, I must say, I am flattered. You think that after a mere two years that I'd be able to not only rebuild an army of nightmares, nightmares that you destroyed when you turned them against me, but also actually _want _to deal with you lot again. I'm afraid to say that, this time, you're wrong."

"Like bloody hell I am!"

"Wait, Bunny. Jack, what exactly did you see?"

"...I dunno...it was like...it was like the nightmares, you remember? Like those, except _bigger, _sharper, kinda like someone took the old ones and made them scarier, upgraded them."

"Hmm...Es strange, yes..."

"I mean the thing was big! It reared up behind Bunny and almost got him...would have, if it weren't for Alice." I faintly heard Jack's voice, somewhere in the back of my mind. But the man hadn't stopped looking at me, eyes not wavering, not even blinking. Holding me there, reaching out and keeping me without force, but just as strong. The grey was flecked with gold, and I realized now that it looked like the grey was overtaking the flecks of light, as if the gold were drowning in a sea of grey and darkness.

But when Jack said my name, it changed. They widened a moment, and then narrowed again, eyebrows drawing inward and lips thin.

"Alice?" He asked curiously, perplexed, almost as if he were trying to recall it from somewhere long ago. Not surprised, not shocked, not pleasent or spiteful. Just...trying to remember.

"What do you have to do with this, Pitch?" Suddenly Jack's voice was next to me, and only then did this man, Pitch, look away from me. The contact broken, everything else came into focus, and I felt like I was bringing my head back above water for the first time in a few minutes. I stepped back half a step and turned to Jack, who was slightly behind me and pointedly glaring right at Pitch, the same look in his eye that Bunny had towards me just moments ago.

"Once more, just for dramatic effect," Pitch's voice mused out nonchalantly, "I had nothing to do with this. Although, when you learn who it _is, _I'd really love to know."

"Oh, shove it up yer-"

In seconds, everything went black. And when it did, there was a noise. It hit me, blackness enveloping everything and throwing me from the ground, the overwhelming sensation of being lost, of impermiable and complete darkness surrounding and enveloping me. There was nothing but the darkness, the ground that slammed up against my spine, and the noise of a mountain falling. A deep, reverberating rumbling, a noise of destruction that vibrated and shook my skull, filling my insides with a cold and hollow feeling.

And then teeth on my blocking wrist.

And a burn.

Then, with a violent jerk and a solid snap of teeth clamping down, the broken, blocky, impossibly strong teeth broke skin. And then it wasn't a burn anymore. It was fire. It was an explosion of agony along the concentrated point of broken skin and teeth and the smell of gasoline and muck and _**burning.**___It ripped through my skin and seared on my bones, an infected, angry, almost impossible sensation of pain for a quick, agonizing moment.

It was all fast, actually. From the darkness to the moment where the pain became so suddenly intense that it actually numbed, was all just a few quick moments. And then, going into some hidden form of survival mode, I let out a muffled scream and broke the darkness, a blinding light of Stardust that was considerably less-elegant than before exploding out from my trapped hand. The sound was higher now, a whinney from something that was entirely not a horse, as the darkness was thrown back.

I bolted into a sitting position, watching as the darkness swirrled in on itself and solidified into one of those mummified, armored horses. It reared up, massive flanks instantly siezed by a barrage of almost angry-acting Stardust. It dove in and stabbed at it, swirrled and struck and ripped and tore until the monter was flailing helplessly. I threw my non-injured hand out, thrusting my palm forward and tightly closing a fist.

The Stardust shot inward, and in a quick, ribbon-like movement, the 'nightmare' was gone. The sound silenced, and all that could be heard was my panting and the steady trinkle of black and silver sand falling to the ground below. I shook, gulping, fist still out in front of me. I tried breathing, tried calming myself down, tried to not look as absolutely pathetic as I actually was.

"...Well, with that being said, I think I'll be going now." I looked quickly over at Pitch, but only caught a glimpse of shadows seeping into the ground, and then nothing to show that he had even been there in the first place, just an unsettling of snow.

"Alice!" Jack was by my side quickly, one cold hand on my upper arm and helping me stand up.

"...What the _hell _was that?!" I finally exclaimed, tired and reaching an edge of what I could deal with in a given day. The shadow, Pitch, the Guardians, being attacked. I lived my days in silent isolation, had grown accustomed to that, and now this?

"I don't know, c'mon!" Jack insisted, pulling at my other arm. Out of reflex, I flinched back and stumbled a bit, looking up at him confused and a bit caught off-guard. He looked at me confused for a moment, a bit hurt, and then understanding flashed across his face. He held his hands out in front of him and said,

"Hey, I'm not trying to hurt you. Just wanna see that, see how bad it is." He moitioned to my right wrist, and only then did I actually lift it up to look at it. The sweater over it was ripped in two large, crescent-moon shaped pieces, and as I slowly peeled it back to my forearm did I see the skin beneath. And I cringed.

"Ow." I said, though it no longer hurt. Just to alleviate some of the tightness in my gut, the sickeningly twisted feeling in my chest at seeing the actual wound. The puncure marks looked like an average bite, red and swollen, bleeding...but that's where it stopped. Because the blood that trickled in fat beads across my wrist were red to begin with, but swirls of black spread across them, as if my body were trying to bleed something out.

"Oh man, we gotta get you back to the Workshop. That could get infected or something, who knows what Pitch feeds them." Jack muttered, worried. My head snapped up, but I was cut off.

"Oi! What kinda crook idea's that, huh? Bring her back to the Workshop? He's outta his bloody mind!" Bunny exclaimed, pointing to us. I looked up at them, taking another step away from Jack, who looked up at me desperatly. Panic fluttered, and then expanded, and I actually considered just fleeing right then and there. The other Guardians were in various stages of confliction and mistrust. The larger one, the one with the beard and the thick accent, looked seriously at Jack and said,

"Jack, es...very dangerous."

"No it's not! Look, she's hurt! She couldn't hurt us if she wanted to!"

"Actually-" Jack shot me a look, and I instantly pressed my lips together and shut up, realizing that now was probably not the best time.

"Listen, if I wanted ta have someone who orphaned kids 'round me, I'd go to a bloody graveyard! That thing isn't goin' anywhere near the Workshop!" Bunny shouted.

I choked silently. One hand wrapped tightly around the wound, feeling a hot sting that was nothing compared to what it used to be. I felt dizzy.

_Well, he's right, isn't he? No argument there, right?_

I felt my jaw flex, felt something hot on the back of my throat, a pain in my ribs. Jack had spun to Bunny and shouted something, but I couldn't hear it. I could see him looking angry, see him defending me to his friend, and see his friend getting angry at him back. I could hear his words echoing in my head until there were just a few. _Orphaned kids..._

I was watching but I wasn't there. The beautiful woman spoke up, shy and uncertain, and Bunny gaped. The large man said something, and Bunny threw out his paws and nodded. Jack's grip on the staff tightened, the woman said something again. I was just trying to breathe. Trying to calculate how much time we had before the moon peaked out from behind the trees. Wondering if the wound was really infected, if I couldn't just leave.

"...Alice?"

I snapped to attention, looking at Jack and the others. They'd come to some sort of agreement, thought 'agreement' might have been a bit of a strong word. The woman and the Sandman were both floating, looking like they got in the middle of an argument where their side wasn't exactly popular. The larger man was looking right at me with eyes that I couldn't look at for more than a moment, serious and searching to my very core. Bunny had his arms crossed and his fur was spiked up in the back for a moment, shaking himself and glaring at the treeline.

Jack was smiling at me, holding out a hand.

I looked at it, then him, and shook my head.

"Jack, I don't think this is a good idea. I've had worse, I can take care of it-"

"Too late! We already decided!" Jack exclaimed, but I couldn't bring myself to step forward. I didn't know where he meant by 'Workshop', didn't think that it was a good idea for anyone that I was around Guardians. "Alice," Jack said again, smirking lightheartedly, "C'mon, at least let us patch that up. It's the least we could do since you _saved Bunny's fluffy tail._" Jack insinuated the last part at Bunny, who glared so hard at Jack I thought he might fall over.

"Jack, I can't. I-"

"Great!"

"I didn't say-!"

But Jack had already taken a hold of my arm, beaming as the utter absurdity of the situation crashed in on me. But before I could speak, before I could say that I wanted to be there as much as Bunny wanted me there, before panic could even have a chance to wrap itself around my heart, the large man pulled something from his coat and shook it, whispering something and then throwing it in mid-air. Out of the thinnest of air, something swirrling exploded from a center point.

It glittered, glistening blues and silvers, swirrling in the center and tall enough for the larger man to step through. I pulled back on Jack's hand a bit, eyes going wide, voices in my head screaming.

_You don't belong there. This is a trap. It's always been a trap before, and it's a trap now._

__But if it was, I had no choice but to fall into it. A squeeze on my arm, a cold gust of wind, and suddenly everything was blue and white, and the sounds of a thousand small hammers began to stifle the voices in my head.


	5. A Time Before the Night

_-It suddenly occured to me that the last chapter was a bit short. I apologize, and hope this one makes up for it. If you have anything you'd like to see or have fixed in the story, feel free to messege me. I may not get back to you, but I'll do the very best I can. P.s._**_this chapter dips a bit into the book universe_**_! Thank you, and enjoy 3 -_

_-Pitch Black-_

The shadows hold no answers. Only questions. It's in their soul, in the fibres of their being, to pull along and never to bring to an end. The mind was its favorite plaything, and even I was not exempt from its games. In fact, I may be its preferred outlet of entertainment, as of late.

They churned up the walls uncontrollably, though far more tame than they had been two years ago. Now, at least, they fell under what influence I'd regained. They parted when I stepped towards them, silenced when I threw a hand up towards them. Until then, though, they whispered fears I'd grown numb to long ago, providing a distracting hum as I sat upon a crooked, sharp-edged throne of splintered rock. My chin rested on one fist, the other hand reaching forward lazily and swirrling the shadows into a recreation of the scene, as if that could give me any clearance.

I'd heard of her, of course. I should know her better than anyone. But I didn't, of course. Even in the tales I'd been told she never once came face-to-face with me. If she had, if they were wrong as I had a feeling they were, I didn't remember her face. The face that was supposed to have done such horrible things. The face of the one who was too afraid to fight me. Yes, indeed the girl did look a bit skiddish...but there was something else in those eyes.

A light. A power, not unlike what I'd seen in Frosts all those years ago...and then some. Maybe it was a fighting spirit, a quick wit, a hidden sarcasm, but there was something akin to moxxy that backed up the light in her eyes. The light that exploded from her small hands, the silver sand that shimmered and disturbed something inside of me. The shadows cringed from the thought of it and became a bit riled, but it was no use to ask them what their memory of this sand was. They wouldn't tell.

"Alice..." I let the name roll off my tongue, the only thing that struck a chord, a chord reaching somewhere farther back than even I could remember, to a different time, "...Maybe you'll be interesting." I mused. "People like you don't tend to stay very quiet. Let's see what you have to do with this mess." I crossed my legs and leaned back, closing my eyes.

From evolved nightmares of no control of mine, to the girl from long ago, I had much to think about.

_-Alice-_

I shifted uncomftorbly for the hundredth time, heart pounding and feeling like my very bones were shaking, trying to seem collected and instead coming off as a child about to get a shot. I'd seen that kind of thing, and it wasn't pretty. But now I could sympathize with them.

The room felt stuffy though it was massive, a ballroom-sized infirmary with dozens of clean white beds lining the walls, various instruments beside them and a door to an office somewhere towards the end of the room. That's where the yetis kept coming in and out of. Yetis. Large, larger than even the large Russian man who, taking into account the vastly decorated palace on a mountaintop, I was assuming was the infamous Nicholas St. North. I'd seen him once, back before he was a Guardian, for less than a second. But I never forgot a name.

The large yetis coated in thick layers of blue and brown fur bustled about, speaking a language even I didn't know, eyes flickering from each other to me. Even abominable snowmen were weary of me. I didn't know if I should be proud or insulted. Or a little bit ashamed. Probably a mixture of all three, but at the moment the only thing I could focus on was the insain amount of irony that was taking place here. You had me, someone that they were all convinced had orphaned someone very close to them, and yet they were giving me medical attention.

It was so odd that I couldn't really function beyond the limits of holding out my arm to a yeti's large, leathery hand and wait as he assessed the bite mark. He shouted something to another yeti passing by, and the other yeti nodded and rushed back the way it had come. Apparently they were good at this, because in a moment of not really comprehending how immobile I should be, I asked,

"Is it bad?" The yeti looked up, surprised, thick eyebrows raising as if he were surprised that the otherwise mute child sitting in the infirmary had actually spoken. Or maybe he was surprised I wasn't setting the place aflame with my 'legendary fury'. He took a second, looked down at the wound that had since stopped bleeding black(they had given me a wrap for it, but the bleeding stopped after a few minutes), and then shook his head. The bite marks were an angry, fresh red, but other than that nothing looked out of place.

The second yeti came running back with something in a silver casing, handing it to the one still holding my arm more gently than I ever imagined a yeti could, and then stepped back and watched, almost intruiged. I sat very still as the yeti flipped open the cap of the container, rubbed a thumb through something clear and gloopy, and then flipped the cap back on, dropping the ointment next to me. He looked at me and said something in gibberish.

"I have no idea what you just said." I deadpanned.

"He said that it may hurt a bit, dear." I jumped a bit, looking over to see the bird-woman-fairy fluttering into the room, coming to rest in the air beside the second yeti. I searched her face instantly, pulling away a bit out of instinct, but found something curious. Maybe she'd been sent here to keep an eye on me, maybe she was here because someone had told her to come here, but if it were to make sure I didn't do anything of utmost evil, she hid it well. There was something dodgy in her eyes, a nervousness, but nothing...fearful, not completely. Just curious, and if I'd allowed myself to believe, almost caring. But I didn't get that look. Never had, truly.

"You speak their language?" I asked, the yeti spreading some of the cold ointment on my wrist. It did burn a bit, but compared to what I had gone through half an hour prior, it was nothing. She shrugged almost modestly and held up her pointer and thumb finger just centimeters from the other.

"Just a little. I, um, come around here a lot, you tend to learn a few words." She offered in a completely delicate voice, the kind that was light and you could imagine raindrops falling on each word. I nodded, and tried to look nonchalant, but continued to keep her in the corner of my eye. There was something...different about her, but a familiar different. The kind of different Jack had. Maybe it was that, other than Jack himself, this was the most I'd spoken to any spirit in thousands of years. And maybe it was that it wasn't hostile.

It was willing. It was gentle. It was agreeably timid, a bit unhearsed, but still...I almost wasn't sure how to act to it.

"Where is 'here'?" I asked instead of saying anything else, the yeti walking away after instructing me in silent gestures to keep my wrist in the air. "I didn't exactly get a good look at it before I was surrounded by a wall of yeti-fur."

"Oh, of course! We're in North's workshop." She explained, and I heard her voice loosen a bit, just for a second, and become almost...normal. I didn't get a lot of normal. My ears perked up a bit and I looked over at her, seeing the second yeti having left just her floating a ways away from the bed.

"Workshop?..." I'd processed it just after I'd said the word, and my eyes went wide open. "Nicholas St. North became Santa Clause?" I exclaimed, and the woman folded her hands together nervously, tilting her head in a bird-like fashion, quick and jolting. I didn't wait for an answer, didn't recognize the sudden nerves she exuded. I was just in shock. Wrist still in the air, I shook my head and gave a quick laugh/breath.

"Well, I certainly didn't see that one coming. I like the irony though." I mused, thinking of breath of a second that I'd seen Nicholas St. North.

"What do you mean?" I looked over at the woman again and blinked, not understanding, until I realized that not everyone kept up with my train of thought. Sometimes it was hard to remember that, with all that I saw, others didn't see nearly as much. I stepped back and took in the whole picture, they were in the picture, looking in.

"Oh, um..."I stuttered, suddenly aware that I may word it wrong, "...Well, I mean, a long time ago I glanced at him. I mean, not in a weird way, I was just flying by and saw a bunch of Cossaks. One of them called him by his full name. I didn't know he became a Guardian, much less Santa Clause. It's kind of a nice twist of fate, you know?"

"You remember his name from all those years ago?" She asked, half-curious, half-almost-impressed. Something sparked in my chest, and I tried so hard not to take too much stock in it. I just nodded and said, looking back at my wrist, hearing the yeti coming back.

"I don't forget names. Not easily, anyways."

"Oh, that's..."

"Strange?" I asked, resigning to the fact that yes, I was probably a very, very strange person to this Guardian. Infamous and yet small, sitting on a hospital bed holding her wrist up to be bandaged by a yeti. He cupped it in his hand and placed a cottony pad on the bitemark.

"No, actually. I think that's quite endearing."

My head didn't process the words very fast. It took them in, swished them around a bit, put them in order, and then decided their meaning. Then did it again. And when it finally clicked, I sat straight so suddenly that it make the yeti jerk a bit, looking up at me with surprise and a bit of trepidation. But I was looking past him. _Endearing. _I'd been around for thousands of languages to be born and to die, and I knew most words extremely well. Endearing was not one I had most practice in. It was not one used in association with me unless the words 'is absolutely the opposite of' were between my name and it.

She just called it endearing. Not me, but a part of me. A strange part.

I looked over at her in surprise, feeling how wide my eyes were, lips parted, and half of me screaming something about lies and traps again. But a metaphorical hand was clamped over it when the woman saw me and did something that was probably small, _so small_, to her, but to me it was almost everything.

She offered a shy little shrug, and smiled.

Real, no hidden agendas. A smile that made her eyes glitter and that's how I knew, I knew she meant it. Maybe she was a bit scared, maybe she was really in here to keep an eye on me, but that didn't detract from the fact that she gave me a real smile after a real compliment. Jack had smiled at me, but it wasn't like this. His was naive, he didn't know who I was. She knew. This woman knew. And she still smiled.

I didn't notice the yeti had finished bandaging my wrist until he lightly tapped my forearm, and I looked up at him as if I'd just realized his existance. Quickly I let down my arm and pulled the sleeve well over my hand, balling up the hem in my hand, still almost numb from something so impossiblly small. Before I could look up, before I could say anything else, the doors clicked open again and a familiar cold breeze blew in.

"Jack!" The woman exclaimed, and I looked up to see her smile at him, a smile so bright it made the room seem lighter. Jack was walking with the staff resting on his shoulder and one hand in his pocket, smirking as if his face had stuck that way.

"Hey! North wants one of us to go check on Jamie and Soph, just to make sure they're okay. Sandy has work to do, Mr. Cotton-up-his-butt complained something about hard-boiled eggs, and North wants to stay here." Jack was so easy about not mentioning why North didn't want to leave his workshop in the presence of something dangerous as me. He just smoothed right over it, and Tooth nodded after a moment.

"Sure! I have to make sure Sophie's been flossing, anyway. Her Lateral Incisor's gonna pop out anyday now!" She exclaimed, feathers ruffling as she became animated and exstatic. Quickly she fluttered towards the doors, and Jack began to walk towards me...when she stopped, and turned in mid-air, one arm out the door.

"Oh, and Alice..." Both Jack and I tensed a bit, "...Since you'll remember, my name's Toothiana...but call me Tooth, all the boys here do!"

And with a timid nod, she was gone.

"Ha, Tooth, she's a real sweetheart, you know- hey, you alright?" Jack asked, and snapped me back to reality. I shook myself and nodded, looking away from the door to him and pushing off the table, standing up just to get myself moving a bit. I couldn't remember being this numb.

"Um, yeah, just...she really is nice." I managed out, and Jack chuckled again.

"Belive it or not, we're all not Bunny." He joked, but I looked up and then immediatly down, not having the guts to say that, from my experiance, Bunny was actually kind of mild... "Hey now, what's with the long look? Cheer up! You're in the North Pole! Most kids would be wetting their Ninja Turtle pajamas!" Jack joked, and I tried to smile, but it came out all wrong and forced. I just rubbed my arm and bit my cheek, eyes darting all around the room.

I didn't want to ask. Was afraid that I knew the answer. Was afraid that, despite how he was acting now, once it was out there there was no getting it back, and he'd shy away just like the rest of them. But I really shouldn't have expected this much in the first place, should have stayed in my trees and hid at night. Should have kept my lack-of-personality to myself. But I didn't. And now, I really couldn't hold it in any longer.

"...They told you about me." It wasn't a question, which made it easier. But it still hung there for a few seconds. I looked up to see Jack shift, shrugging and kicking the frost on the ground with his feet.

"...They told me _something _about you." I let out a breath of recognition, resignment, a whole bunch of 'r' words that meant 'I know what's coming next', "But I should know better than anyone that there's more to a person than stories."

Something buzzed in my head, and I shook it out visibly. But it came back, and so did those mixed feelings of anxiety and being fooled and wanting to believe that it was all real. But it wasn't. It never was. And if it were or not, I had no right to choose. He raised his eyebrows and said,

"Hey, you doubting me? Trust me, I know what it's like to be labeled."

"As an infamous murderer?"

"...Well, no, but they did call me 'silly', and that hurt."

We paused for a second.

Then another second.

Jack laughed, and I snorted, teeth clenched and feeling everything lift and blow away. I felt light. I felt everything get pushed to a tiny little corner. Because this was okay, wasn't it? This was happy, this was innocent, this was funny. I could do this.

"Hey, c'mon, I wanna show you around!" Jack suddenly blurted, and I glanced at the door, thinking of the rather large, angry, ex-Russian-thief-lord, yeti-master that owned the workshop and who by not underestimated means thought I would kill any one of them at the drop of a hat.

"Jack, I don't think that's a good idea. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that that's the opposite of a good idea." I deadpanned, and he jumped a little in place, looking excitedly at the door, and then back at me with big, blue-white eyes, looking every bit a child.

"But what kid doesn't want to see Santa's Workshop?!" He asked, and I held up two fingers.

"First, Nicholas St. North thinks I'm an infamous traitor. Second, I am infinitely older than you, young man..." I paused, but that didn't stop the words from tumbling out, "And aren't you curious as to if the...if what you were told about me...is true or not?...Or if there's more to it?"

"Nope!" It stepped back in surprise, but Jack honest-to-goodness wasn't focused, "We can talk about bit boring stuff like that later!"

"_Boring? _Young man-"

"Allliiiccee!" He whined, throwing his head in the direction of the door and hopping more frequently now. I paused, looked at him, and then at the door. Jack really did not care at the moment. Something new buzzed through my veins, something I wouldn't know for a long, long time. He didn't care.

So why should I, right this moment?

"Fine."

_-A Good Time Later-_

The Workshop was huge, that much I could give North. It was huge, it was maze-like...and it was wonderful. I could barely keep up with Jack, pausing to admire small details like carvings in the pillars and red-gold trim on everything from the carpet to the doorknobs. And those were just the hallways, filled with beautiful script and paintings and etchings.

The actual workrooms were a thousand times that. They streached so far sometimes that I couldn't see the end, filled with the sounds of tinkering, shouting yetis, toys buzzing and squeaking and ringing, hammers hammering. Elves, tiny men not a foot high with pointy hats and little red costumes, would stumble dopily about and make me remember to hold back a quick laugh here or there.

"So the elves don't make the toys?" I called over to Jack over the noise, eyes wide and something strong filling my chest, some sort of half-car-half-airplane buzzing over my head and curving in the air. I thought of the child who would open that. Who would play with that. Wondered if it would sit on a shelf when the child got older or if they would keep playing with it, wondered if they would give it to their children.

"Nah, the yetis got everything at the pole handled. These little guys are more for entertainment." Jack joked, just as one fell into a massive pot of blue paint and splashed it onto a yeti's fur. "Aaand that's our cue!" Jack exclaimed, pulling me out of the room and closing the door just as the yeti began to yell in that strange language. We made it to the hallway that seemed strangely quiet despited the cacophany of noise that still echoed from the dozens of other doors in the hall.

"Pretty cool, huh?" Jack asked, and all I could do was nod. The whole place was so big, so full of a kind of magic that I couldn't describe. It was beautiful. It was elegant. It was playful. It felt like every child's dream of what would be in a workshop put together to create this place.

"Jack!" There was a call from somewhere very, very far away, so faint that I didn't know it was Tooth until Jack cocked his head to the side and called back,

"Tooth? You alright?"

"I thought she went to check on the kids?" I asked, and Jack pushed out his bottom lip in confusion. He kicked up into the air and spun the staff, looking back at me quickly and saying,

"Wait here, I'll be back before you can say 'snowday'!"

"Ja-" But he was gone, taking off down the hallway and spinning around a corner as a cold wind blew past me, ruffling my hair and chilling my neck, filtering through my sweater. And then I was alone in the hall, just standing there, looking around. My sneakers squeaked a bit, and I felt an inkling of worry settle in. What if one of them found me here? Alone? What would they think I was doing? What if they didn't beleive me? What if-

"What if, North? _What if? _Bloody hell 'what if'!"

The accent was thick and unmistakable. And it was coming from a door about three doors down to my left. There were more muffled voices and a loud 'slam' followed by more muffled voices, sounding angrier than before. I shuffled away, thinking to myself that no, I'd made so many poor decisions in the past few hours and this would most definitly top them off. I had suffered a blow to the head somehow, and this was all some freaky daydream and I'd wake up back in my tree and they would still hate me and everything would be so normal...

By the time I'd finished the thought, I was already at the door and leaning in, one hand braced on the wall beside it and leaning towards the doorframe crack, not wanting them to see my shadow or for Jack to come zipping down the hall and see me before I saw him. It was hard at first, but once I leaned in a bit closer and focused, I could hear the voices over the sounds of construction and toys being tested.

"Sandy told us 'imself centuries ago, right mate?"

Pause.

"Story es...vague, yes, but I agree Bunny. Es no doubt, we would not be here if there was...but Jack seems to like the company-"

"Company? Scroot, North, we're company! She's a bloody coward that _left _a _child _in the middle of the last battle of the Dark Ages!"

"Bunny, es not so simple! Yes, we are family to Jack, but...we are not..._friends._ We are his brothers and sister and fathers, we are closest to him than anyone. But Jack sees a friend in her."

"Jackie-boy's got pretty bad judge a' character."

"Do we?"

"...Dunno. Don't trust her. Don't like her bein' here. Messes with me, what would Manny say?"

"As of late, Manny has nothing to say on matter. Maybe he does not know, the sun was still up when we were out."

Pause.

"See? Even Sandy thinks Manny's gonna be angry!"

"Sandy did not say! He said Manny may know, may not know, but es no cause for us to fight over... Maybe Jack should see her until Manny says otherwise."

"But-"

"Not in Workshop! Not near children, just Jack and her so that he does not feel so alone. So far, she seems safe around him. Until proven otherwise, I think we should let Jackie know."

"Until proven otherwise. When's that? When Jack gets attacked by whatever that thing was and she ditches him?"

"She did save you from nightmare, Bunny."

"...Scroot, don't tell me you're defendin' her!"

"No. No, I am simply stating fact. Maybe es not us she es after, maybe we don't know story. Maybe we do. But Jack was alone for 300 more years than he ever should have been! We owe him benefit of doubt."

Pause. Pause. Pause.

Cold wind.

I jumped from the wall, breathing heavy and trying hard not to look like I'd just overheard anything, trying to seem like I was undercontrol and didn't feel like all of the emotions inside of me were going to completely explode from my chest. Because, by the look on Jack's face, he'd already gotten enough back news. I stepped away from the wall as the wind rattled the door, Jack touching down in front of me with Tooth just seconds behind, feathers frayed and looking more upset than I ever remember seeing anyone.

The door flew open and North stood there, looking down at us with confused, worried eyes. Before they could fall on me, Jack cut everyone off.

"Something's wrong in Burgess!"

_-?-_

The woman shot away so fast, so afraid, so like a bird after a gunshot. I relished in it, feeling the rough bark with the palm of my hand, looking from the sky out to the streets. Moonlight was all that fell to illuminate darkness. He was looking, looking down at dark tendrils that slunk across the ground, that intertwined behind houses and stopped short of windows. He looked down and saw it all. But he wasn't who I cared about.

She had gotten the one good. Too good, unfortunately, and it had gotten too wiley. Went after the wrong one. But this was night. This was my turn to take control, tighten the reigns and make sure this small went off perfectly.

Small. So small. I just wanted to see, to spy, if I couldn't capture him yet. Just look and make sure it was tangible.

The moon slid behind a cloud for five seconds. I counted them on my tongue. And in those five seconds, I felt eyes. Eyes, a presence not unsimilar to my own. And I felt a smile twist the corner of my mouth.

_Ah, so you've come out, old friend._

When the moon slid back out, there was nothing to see. Nothing for now. Not until the Guardians got here. Not until she got here. Not until the children screamed.


	6. A Twist in the Story

_-Thank you all for reading and I sincerely hope you like it so far. Enjoy 3 -_

_-Alice-_

The care-free look in Jack's eyes was gone, replaced with layers and layers of fear and desperation. I could see it on his face, feel it in the wind that whipped up the silver dust that sped me along with Jack in the night sky. I could almost hear it in the way he was so silent. I looked over again, young and untouched features scrunched up and casting a shadow over his eyes, hands tight on the staff that he held against this chest, pointed forward like a sail.

I hadn't said a word to him since we left, Jack barely getting out that Tooth had seen strange shadows in Burgess and she, unable to take all of them herself, had flown back as fast as she could. The second he barely filled us in, Jack was off, and I was following him out of half-concern, half-not wanting to be with the Guardians all alone. I'd heard them call after us, but we were gone so fast, and I was following Jack without a word. There really wasn't any say in the matter.

Something below caught my eye.

I looked down, seeing us break past the treeline, the neighborhood spreading out below us. To anyone who hadn't spent an unhealthy amount of time in trees, the neighborhood would look normal. The sun was rising, oranges cast along the sides of houses, people were just about to wake up. It was a time of kinetic rest.

But Jack and I saw it. Saw _them_.

Shadows, creeping in places they shouldn't have been, moving imperceptibly fast around the corner of a house, seeping out from gutters and gliding along the edges of sidewalks. All of them moving to one house already hidden in the shade of trees. To anyone, it would have been the movement of clouds across the sky. But there were no clouds out today.

"Jamie! Sophie!" Jack breathed for the first time in hours, stopping in the air and looking down at the house. His eyes seemed trained on the tiny family home, but my vision darted elsewhere. The treeline. Just beside the home. Standing away from the shadows. I knew that silouhette.

"Jack!" I exclaimed, grabbing his arm and pointing down to the tall, grey man at the edge of the forest, almost right beneath us. Jack's head snapped downwards and, without a word, he was gone. Dropped from next to me and sped head-first at the man below us.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and something from another time pulled me down with him, concerned. Concerend for Jack. For these shadows. For the man that I didn't know. Certainly not concerned for why.

"Jack! Stop it!" I ordered, but he'd already flown into the man, Jack floating a few inches above him and shaking him violently by the collar of the man's robe, face tense and breathing heavy.

"Make them stop! It's over, Pitch! You _lost!_" Jack shouted, the man looking at Jack incredulously and simultaniously furious, too shocked to react at the moment. But he didn't need to. Because I didn't know I had my hands on Jack's arm until I did, I didn't know I pulled him from the man until I had. Didn't think until I was between the two of them, holding onto a frantic Jack's wrists. "Let go!"

"No! Jack, calm down! You're going to hurt yourself!" I demanded, glaring.

"Or I will..." The man behind me muttered, and I half-turned to glare at him, as well, only to see that he wasn't looking, smoothing out his robe and scowling at the ground.

"He's doing this! He's going to hurt Jamie and Sophie!" Jack pleaded, trying to wrestle his arms from my hands. I held not tighter, but different, hooking my hands beneath his palms on his wrists and pushing him away to arms-length. His face wasn't care-free. It wasn't the Jack I'd met in the tree. It was a complete other side of him, a scared side, a side that had something to do with the man behind me. And yet, here I stood between them.

"Jack, it's going to be fine," I said, though I was half-eyeing the shadows as they gathered in the treeline behind the house, fifteen yards from us, "I promise. I won't let them do anything to...um...the people in this house." Now I let go, seeing him slacken a bit, but before he could go for the man behind me again I spun, looking the man dead in the eye.

In fact, he was taller than me, towering almost, and looking up didn't do much for me and what stance i was about to take to redeem myself for pulling Jack away. I squared my shoulders, clenched my fists, and allowed for stardust to float around my hand, then holding the hand in front of me and aimed at the man. He paused a moment, lips never leaving a guarded frown, and quirked a brow at the silky substance around my closed fist.

"I honestly don't care who you are, or what you have to do with this. But if you move from this spot, you're going to regret it." The words fell from my mouth, thinking of Jack behind me and all that I'd gone through this day, the fact that my closed fist hurt a bit from the wound on my forearm, a bundle of energy and anger coiling inside of my stomach. Tighter and tighter. The man's eyes widened a bit, but his mouth never left the frown.

"I can assure you, I'm merely here to observe-"

"I. Don't. Care." I accentuated, seeing one of his eyes twitch a bit, frown pulling tighter. But he didn't move, although it did look like he was about to say something. "Jack," I cut him off, "Are your friends in that house? Jamie and...um, Sophie?"

"Yeah."Jack said, tone sounding a bit odd. I opened my mouth to tell him to go to his friends, but a different voice shot out from behind us.

"Oi! Whatcha standin' here for?!"

That was all it took. One shout, and it was like stepping on an eggshell.

There was the deep sound of a cumbling mountain, and suddenly there was a shadow slithering along the ground, up to a lamp post and shattering the light within it, glass raining down as the shadow shot out of it and into the air, taking shape as it fell towards us. There were other noises, others of this 'nightmare', and I suddenly felt like we'd been led into a trap.

Into part 2 of a trap that started hours and hours ago.

"Jack!" Tooth called, as I side-stepped quickly and threw both me and the man away from the nightmare horse that slammed into the ground, a muted 'boom!' as it hit the ground and rounded on us, all massive torso and glaring eyes. Throwing my hand with the stardust in front of me, I tensed and felt a vibration through my veins, throwing my fist open and the stardust exploding out in waves, slamming into the nightmare. It screamed in a deep whinney, throwing its head back before quickly being enveloped.

Something in the back of my mind clicked into place.

Something played in the back of my mind as I shot at a shadow inching up the house, as I watched Jack swat another one away with his staff. Shadows. Somewhere even deeper and darker than the night. And then light. Flashes, bursts, light. It played like an afterthought, me trying to see if there were others, trying to pin point where all the Guardians were. Wondering if we were waking people up. Wondering if the world was spinning or if it was just me.

And then there was a silence. After an explosion of action, a frenzy, there was just this silence. I turned to the man behind me and saw him looking at a spot on the ground where there was a smudge of black from where the nightmare landed. No, actually, not looking at it. _Scowling _was more like it, nose upturned and eyes dark.

And then I knew it wasn't him.

It hit me so softly and suddenly that I almost forgot to wonder why, why wouldn't I blame this man, too? He hurt my friend, or from what I could tell of their relationship. He just oozed evil not-niceness. He was grey for goodness sake...

"It isn't yours, is it?" My voice was quiet, but his eyes snapped to me in a second.

"Alice, are you okay?" I turned my shoulder, looking at Jack as he surveyed the damage, Tooth's green form blurring into one of the upper windows of the house. He looked frazzled, but recovering from whatever had gripped him just then. I nodded, and looked at the black marks left on the road. To civilians it would look like tire tracks.

"What were those things? Nightmares?" I asked, and Jack nodded, looking up behind me and glaring.

"Bet he would know." He muttered, and I looked back at the man with the spiky black hair and grey skin. I saw him get a sinister smirk that dropped ice down my gut.

"Oh, you'd love that, wouldn't you Frost?" He spit Jack's name like a foul taste in his mouth. I looked between the two, catching Bunny and North approach from behind Jack. I'd known they were here, but hadn't seen them until now. I assumed they'd been a bit more hidden, not wanting to alert a neighborhood of children that Santa and the Easter Bunny had gathered.

"Pitch, I bloody shoulda known it-!"

"Stop it!" I exclaimed, holding a hand out and stopping Bunny, who stood a few feet from me with a boomerang in hand and a look of hatred across his face. I felt that knot tighten in my gut and I let out a frustrated breath, feeling manners fall to the side of frustration and fear and anxiety and confusion. "What's with you people, do you do this to everyone? Just immediatly try to beat each other up? You're the Easter Bunny for goodness sake, put that thing away!"

"Hey, what's up with you suddenly protectin' him?" Bunny accused, and I clenched my teeth together, biting back a remark and coming up with a new one, lowering my hand and motioning back with my head.

"It couldn't be him. First of all, he looks about as strong as a praying mantis-"

"I am standing right behind you."

"And second, they're trying to attack him, too. I don't know what these things are, or who he is, or really who any of you are...but this is affecting my world, too. I just don't think squabbling over this is going to make anything better at all." I stood firmly, but felt something uneasy come from what I'd just said. Something I'd said wrong. Everyone's eyes narrowed at me. Everyone except Jack, who was looking around just as desperatly as I.

"How're we suppose to know if she ain't working with Pitch?" Bunny asked, voice low and dripping with accusation.

"Ex-_cuse _me?!" Pitch, the man behind me, exclaimed, face insulted and motioning to me with his hand, "Does this look like the kind of creature I'd associate with, _ever_? If I wanted to endure another angsty teenager, I'd try and recruite Frost again!"

"Was that because I called you a praying mantis?" I asked in a moment of deadpan.

"North, we can't just stand here!" Bunny exclaimed. I faced them again, and felt something twist sickeningly at the implications of those words. E. Aster Bunnymund was clutching the boomerang, looking seriously back at North, fur on his back standing up. Nicholas St. North was looking from Bunny to me, then from me to Pitch, something in his eyes trying to sort things out. I took a step back.

"What?" Jack asked, quiet at first, and then realizing that neither of the two men were listening to him, spoke up, clutching the staff and exclaiming, "_What? _Are-are you two serious right now?" He asked, incredulous as the two finally looked at him.

"Jack-"

"Are you really..." Jack took a moment, shaking his head as I shook mine for a different reason.

"Jack, it's okay." I said quietly, and he looked up at me with a look that...hurt. Hurt so badly. Because his look was hurt. His look was sad. His look was confused. I held up my hands and said, still shaking my head, "Really, it's fine. I promise. I'll see you around." I caught myself on the last word, seeing his eyebrows pull together, mouth open in shock.

"No!" He exclaimed, and for a moment I thought, for a horrible moment I swear I thought, that he meant he didn't want to see me again, "No, no that's not okay! This isn't okay!" He said the last part to the others, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Pitch step into the shadows of a treeline. No one else saw, no one else felt it. But I did. I saw him leave. I felt that he was still there, Jack tirading.

"Jack, we told you-"

"You told me what Sandy thought he saw!" Jack exclaimed, pointing to the small man who came floating to the scene, accompanied by a confused and worried Tooth, "But you don't know what happened! You don't know what really happened! No one does!" He wasn't yet yelling, just speaking loudly, teetering on yelling. Bunny waved the boomerang in the air, as if casting away Jack's words like cobwebs.

"Listen, we're not doin' this again, Jackie. You know what we said, and I think now even that's too much. We just don't want ya to get hurt, kid!" And for the first time, I saw a look of real concern cross Bunny's face. Concern for Jack. Had it not been because of me, the moment would have been extremely touching.

"Hurt? Like you would have been if she hadn't saved you oh, I don't know, _last night_?" Said Jack, who stood there in confirmation as Bunny paused, nothing to say. Jack took that opportunity and turned to me, holding out a hand in a friendly gesture. I pulled at the hems of my sleeves, looking at him and wondering what he wanted me to do. What he wanted a girl who hadn't spoken to another spirit in more time than he'd been alive and dead to do. A girl who just wanted to leave. Who wanted to sleep, and then wake up and know that it was all a dream. A wonderful, terrible dream.

"Alice, tell us. Tell them- tell _me _what really happened." My heart stopped, and I felt dread slide thickly down my throat, "Now's your chance! Spirits have judged you for a long time, right? I know what that feels like, just...show them! Tell us the truth, Alice. It's easy, just...what happened? Even if it's bad, just tell the truth."

Jack's face was tearing me apart for the second time. It was so full of hope. So convinced of something special. Eyes so wide, so innocent, so naive. He, with his whole, big heart, really believed that this girl he'd met a few days ago wasn't what everyone said she was. He believed that if I said something, even if I could, that they'd believe me. That they'd trust my word and everything would be okay. _He's so young..._

"Jack," I said, shaking my head slowly, a pain in my chest, "...I can't. I don't remember. Anything."

There was a quick silence, and more ears than were visible were listening suddenly, curiously. And all I wanted to do was crawl away. Jack looked like he didn't understand.

"But Alice, Sandy remembers. He remembers a big flash, and then MiM was on the moon and-"

"I know." I cut Jack off quickly, fearfully, "I know...I've been told what happened. What people think happened, what they think didn't. I've heard so many different versions but...I don't remember it. It's not there, I've looked for it but it just...I don't remember anything about that day.

"I'm sorry, Jack." And I meant it. I meant it so badly.

"But...you can fight the shadows and...even if you don't remember! Even if that stuff did happen, even if it didn't, that...that stuff you make, the silvery-white stuff, it hurts them! It hurts the darkness! It's the most effective thing against whatever those things are!" Jack was desperate, and I could see it, and the others could see it. And only now did I realize what he was asking them.

"Jack." North silenced him, tone dead serious. Jack turned, and I looked from the small, pained-looking Jack to North. North had a look that was impossibly large, a finality to his tone. Bunny glanced at me just once before looking back to the large man who looked down on Jack. "We cannot. She es not in same situation as you, this es different set of circumstance. I am sorry, but es too dangerous, and Manny would never allow."

Part of me was relieved. I liked Jack, he was a friend if I could use that word, he was at the very least a small occurence that meant the world to me. The fact that he stood here now, against his family, trying to plead my case, was something I couldn't wrap my head around. It was strange. It was beautiful.

But I couldn't join them. Because, in that big black space in my memory, maybe I was the monster they thought I was. Maybe I wasn't. And still, even still, even if they were wrong...I wasn't one of them.

"...I need some space." Jack said quietly, gripping the staff.

"Jack..." Tooth said quietly, sympathetically. But Jack shook his head and kicked into the air. His departure was not as violent, not as sudden. It seemed weighted down, slower, and yet he still dissapeared. They let him go in some silent agreement to give him space.

Space he shouldn't have needed to ask for.

"Please," I begged, looking back at them, "Don't blame him...for any of this." All eyes were on me in a second, and I honestly wish they weren't. I wished they'd stop looking at me like they didn't know what to think. Or that they did know what to think. I wished they'd listen to me, but I wished I didn't have to say anything in the first place. I wished I'd never met Jack and I wished I'd met more people like him. I wished I could figure out if I was confident about this or a scared little child. I wished Tooth didn't trust me. I wished Bunny did.

I wished I remembered.

"Jack," I said, realizing that I was alone and had to speak carefully, "He just wanted to make friends, okay? You know him better than I do. I don't know if he was lonely or a poor judge of character, but he wanted to be my friend. I didn't ask him to, I didn't seek him out, I was just in a tree...and I wasn't planning on doing anything to hurt him.

"I get that maybe you don't trust me...that you really, really have no excuse to. But I'm not going into details about how you should, or how I've been wronged, or how I don't remember what happened so we can't say for sure why I left the child I was supposed to protect. I can't change your minds, you're older and set, you've been told the same story for so long it isn't a story anymore...but Jack's young. Younger than any of us. And..." I paused, something tight in my chest and thinking about Jack alone now, wondering things that I couldn't even fathom.

"...And if he wants to believe something, let him."

The words came out stronger than I'd expected, stronger than I'd felt, and even I felt a bit surprised. Though I fought through it, not wanting to see their faces, turning and taking to the air. Jack was out there, and regardless of whatever hole I'd just dug myself into, regardless of how I was flying alone in an area that had attacked me twice in less than a day, I had to find him. Had to apologize. Had to tell him it was okay for him to leave, that I wasn't obligating him to stay by any means.

I coasted for a few minutes before I saw a frosting over two trees, stopping mid-air and slowly dropping down between them, looking at where Jack must have brushed against the leaves and the trunks as I got farther into the darker shaded forest. My feet hit the ground softly, the first layer of snow not yet melted, and looked around. That was it. There were no more signs of him, no feet prints, nothing but trees huddled together and squirrels somewhere farther away in the distance.

"Jack?"

"You're oddly concerned about him."

"You're oddly creepy."

"...Really? You've had eons to come up with various retorts and you choose _that?_ I almost want to hate you based soley on your lack of destructive sarcasm."

I turned to Pitch, seeing him looking at me judgementally, lips still thin and eyes still narrowed...but behind his demeanor, there was caution. There always seemed to be caution, as if he were waiting for a storm, stepping lightly, analyzing and prodding without letting go of what was inside. He was observing. And he was here, in the dark, looking like a shadow himself, observing me. And I was supposed to be scared, I was sure. But I wasn't. Not really.

"Your name is Pitch." I stated, curious and also stalling until Jack heard us. I was only a few minutes behind him, and he hadn't been moving very fast. Pitch's brow rose a bit, but only just so.

"Last I recalled, it was. Would you like an autograph from the Boogeyman himself?" He snarked. I tilted my head.

"The Boogeyman?...The _Nightmare King_?!" I exclaimed, eyes flying wide. The Nightmare King. The man who had supposedly attacked on the day of my life, the one single day of my life that I did not remember. The man who had attacked and killed...his...family, who had started this all? And he was here, talking to me so calmly? I'd heard stories, all of them, and they all ended with him on Earth. Yet I'd never seen him, assumed he was dead. But he wasn't.

"I'd ask if you remembered me, but as I recall, you don't. Pity." He mused, looking down at his nails again as if talking about the moment of his greatest demise was like discussing Russian geography. There he was, all composed. And here I was, trying not to freak out and act like panicking wasn't part of my daily routine. I opened my mouth to speak.

His eyes snapped to me.

And I paused, I looked at his eyes and read what he allowed me to see. It was strange. This one moment was very, very strange. Because there was a connection that was always there, something in possibly another lifetime, but this was...this was different. It was just a look. A flash of yellow in the dark. A touch of silver. And I completely understood what he wasn't saying.

I shut my mouth and nodded, fingers toying with the hems of my sleeves.

"I'd come down now, Frost." Pitch said in the way where he spat his name again, voice so elegant and yet tone so harsh. I looked up at a rustling and saw Jack descend from a tree close to me, landing a few feet away. And despite myself, despite everything, I smiled.

"Jack, oh good. You aren't dead. Or...more-dead. Did you die? I'm sorry, that's not a question to ask... I think your friends are going to be okay with you." I stumbled, and Jack tried and failed to surpress a smirk.

"That was the most pathetic thing I've ever heard." I turned and glared at Pitch, but wouldn't admit that I didn't have a 'retort' to that. Instead, I turned back to Jack and, ignoring Pitch, said,

"Jack, you're a wonderful person but-"

"It's not you, it's me."

"-But I think that this, whatever this is...Jack, you can't leave behind your friends because of me. Don't fight with them...we-"

"We can still be friends-"

"_PITCH!_" Jack and I both shouted, frustrated as the Nightmare King gave us a look like he honestly did not care, Jack stepping up to ask something that possibly went along the lines of 'why are you here', where a different crashing came towards us. When we looked, North and Bunny were breaking through the trees, stumbling with North's girth, followed by Tooth and The Sandman. I stepped back out of reflex, seeing North look up and his eyes widen a bit.

"Jack! Es safe, yes?"

"Um-"

"Oh Jack! We were so worried! Are you okay? Don't run off like that!" Tooth spit-fired in a kind, dainty fear. Sandman created a series of images above his head, all in his golden sand, communicating silently. Jack chuckled a bit and I saw him raise his hands, me stepping back behind him to let them all have their moment. Their eyes were so full of care, of concern, looking upon Jack like they hadn't seen him for years.

I cast a look over and, surprised, saw that Pitch was still there. But he wasn't looking at the scene. Wasn't looking at the Guardians or Jack. He was looking at me. With that look he had when we'd first met, the strange look that was calculating and blatantly analyzing, unguarded and fierce. And again, I couldn't look away until I heard Jack's voice.

"Sorry, I didn't want you guys to worry. Still getting used to the fact that people to that when I leave, you know?" I saw something in the eyes of all the Guardians. It was something powerful. It was something I'd seen, without fail, in every action taken on this Earth.

Guilt.

"Jack, we do know...and we were talking. About you. About how much we care about you, about how you're our family and so, so precious, Jack." Tooth said, voice so soft, like a mothers, and I was transfixed. "And we'd never want you to hurt..." She paused, and then glanced at North, who looked over and nodded to her. North looked at Jack with a soft smile, the kind that looked like it belonged on his face instead of the scowl I recieved.

"Ve have decided that Alice will join us."

"...What?" Jack and I chorused, at the same time, different inflections. His was excited, hopeful. Mine was shocked. And scared. And unready. It was more of a noise that an animal made before it fleed, all throat and nerves. That knot in my stomach snapped and I swore I was going to throw up. Throw up because everything was colliding inside of me. I was scared and I was elated. I was excited and confused.

"Listen, it ain't because we like her, mate," Bunny added, me still trying to figure out when I'd agreed to this, "It's cuz ya made a valid point there. Whatever freaky stuff she uses, she beats down those gumbies like their bloody tissue paper. We could use that."

"...Really? Really?!" Jack exclaimed like a small child. I was sweating.

"But, es one eeensy condition. She stays at Pole, with us, where we can watch to make sure no wishy-washy goes on." North said, holding up a finger to Jack. So far I was the main subject, but no one was speaking to me. I was just trying to keep up. Jack nodded as if he were the one they were discussing.

"Then I'll stay, too. It'll be safer, easier to see when something's wrong!"

"This is the most ridiculous bloody plan..."

"I'm glad you're happy Jack!"

"You guys...really-"

"Wait." It was small, which was why I was surprised when they all actually stopped and looked at me. North was holding a snowglobe, the one that made the portal from before. Jack's eyes were practically lit up, his smile cemented on his face. I couldn't stop shaking my head. "Wait, I never...I never said anything about wanting to do this. I...I don't know any of you! I barely know Jack! I'm not staying somewhere with people that hated me seconds ago just because there's some weird stuff going down! I get a say in this!...Right...?"

"Alice." Jack said, but instead of dissapointment like I expected, he was...light, airy, leaning on the staff and grinning, "No one's forcing you to do anything."

"We're not?"

"The offer's out there. I know, trust me I know, they switch opinions on the turn of a dime. When I first became a Guardian they kidnapped me in a sack. But...we're not doing that for you. It's just there. I'm not gonna manhandle you through that portal. But I want you to come, for what it's worth. I want you to come and show these guys you're not bad, and I want you to tell me about you, and...we can be friends, you know? Fighting these things is on the side with how easily you whip their butts. It's your choice, though."

Every fiber of my being said that the easiest way out of this was 'no'. A simple word. One word, and an entire course of events would never have happened. Or maybe they would have. I would never know. My mind was made up before Jack finished talking.

"...Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah, okay. But just for now." Jack probably didn't catch that last part, because he jumped in the air and let out a loud hollar, throwing a fist in the air as Bunny groaned and North opened the portal. I sighed and wondered how many times I could almost-die because of bad decisions in a day. I still had about two hours.

"Oh, wonderful. Happy ending. I'm going to go vomit now-"

"Not so fast Boogeyman!" North exclaimed and, with a surprisingly strong hand, reached over and grabbed Pitch by the collar, holding the now-flailing man in the air.

"Un_hand _me you giant, oafish brute! Let me down or I swear I will make your every waking hour pure hell!" Pitch's temper tantrum, a break from his normal suave and stoic routine, made me want to laugh so badly. But I didn't, because I felt what was happening next. North shook a finger at Pitch and said, face serious now as I spied a thread of golden sand creep up to Pitch.

"Ah-ah-ah! I am still not convinced the mess vas now you, Pitch. So, until notice has been given that you are innocent, you are guilty! And as such, will stay at Pole with us where we can watch." North explained as the golden sand wound around the thin man and cinched, traping his squirming arms to his side. I saw black shadows flicker, but...they looked weak.

He looked weak. Angry, but weak.

I bit my lip and wanted to say something, anything...but Jack was there next to me, and these were the Guardians, the ones giving me some chance. Good or bad, I still had to find out. But I watched as North smirked at Pitch, saw sudden bags under the furious man's eyes, and something unsettled in my stomach. Something from eons ago tried to break free and scream.

"C'mon, Alice!" Jack ushered me to the portal. I caught a glare from Bunny. A nervous nod from Tooth. Sandy didn't look me in the eye. North was looking at Pitch. With one foot in the portal, I looked back over Jack's shoulder. Pitch was looking over at me, such a grand man with a weakness that I was positive only I could see, trapped by golden bonds.

I couldn't tell what the look was, be it hatred or the same, calculating gaze as before. But it unnerved me.

Jack pushed me the rest of the way through the portal.


	7. A Matter Of Shadows and Moonlight

_-Sorry it took me so long to get this one out! Went on some college visits! Thank you all for your wonderful feedback while I was out! Other than that, feel free to comment. Enjoy 3 -_

_-Pitch's p.o.v-_

The shadows were pathetic in the room. They barely clung to corners, receeded under the bed, lightly dusted the closet. They were practically shades of darker light, though I'd blocked the window with curtains and stuffed the bottom of the door with my own shadows, equally weak and flickering. It disgusted me and infuriated me. I'd never, not even when I'd tried to rip the belief from children, ever been so sick with hatred. It made me shake, made me want to scream and tear the whole Workshop apart, nail by nail, yeti by yeti, Guardian by sickening Guardian. I wanted to destroy it all, wanted to see the Man in the Moon watch.

I wanted the power to do it.

Really, I wanted the power to do anything. Wanted to feel the shadows course through me, feel them bend and break to my will, know them and their corners and their power. I wanted the control it gave me. I wanted to create a nightmare. I wanted to feel fear of others. I wanted to stop feeling my own fear.

An image passed behind my eyes. Red eyes, whinneys, torrents of shadows, a lair in crumbles. Four weeks, without stop. It had taken them four weeks to feed, four weeks for me to gain enough control back to silence them. To rip them apart with the last fibre of strength that I had left, to destory what had taken thousands of years to make, simply because the bloody Guardians wanted to watch an old man fall again. Four weeks of terror.

And now this, as if they think they can wreak whatever havoc they wish upon me. Because I'm the 'bad guy', the Boogeyman, and I deserve it. They're serving their MiM-given duty to make my life hell. And then...her. Alice. That girl that I'd had such a fleeting moment of hope for. That maybe she'd turn out just like my bitter, cold soul. What wonderful company that would have been.

"But no, everyone wants to be best buddies with the Guardians." I muttered to myself, back against the wall, looking at the door manned by two hideous abomanations. I thought of her, of her face, of that string plucked in the back of my mind. She was familiar, but I didn't place her in my mind. Maybe I had seen her that fateful night. Maybe I hadn't. Most likely the latter, for this feeling came from somewhere...far, far away. Another lifetime.

I shook my head to think of anything else, and yet I landed on something just as frustrating.

Whoever was taking the glory from my creations.

"And doing a piss-poor job at it, too." I muttered once more, and was extremely grateful for the first time that the door was closed, because I swore to MiM I was actually pouting. I wasn't upset, no. Anything that got to the Guardians, honestly...

Something a bit heavier settled in my chest, and I rolled my head to the side of the wall, facing the dresser. I took in and let out a heavy breath. It was the reason I was here. The reason I sat in this room armed only by two giant furry bastards. Why I wasn't fighting back.

Because I couldn't.

Not anymore, at least. I felt it, felt it even before I'd been taken back to my home, imprisoned in the cave where I'd spent so long planning, trying, all to gain some recognition. I felt it in my bones, in my chest, in something I'd thought rotted a long, long time ago. In my heart. The shadows on the wall were transparent. They weren't mine. I had none left. When I fell to Earth, the shadows were all I had. This time, I didn't even have that.

So I sat, and waited. For there was nothing else a King could do when they broke his crown, was there?

_-Alice-_

"This is gonna be fun, I promise. It's kinda my thing."

"I don't know..."

Jack sat at the foot of my bed, criss-cross and beaming as if there weren't two massive yetis standing outside. Honestly, it wasn't the yetis that unnerved me, they were actually just large, fuzzy people who had an affinity for making toys. No, they were fine. It was the reason that they were there that made me feel like the room was too small and my lungs weren't quite big enough. I frowned and quirked an eyebrow at him, not knowing how being locked in a room like some big, dangerous animal could at all be fun.

It looked like he was about to say something, but I gave him a look entirely not amused and he let off the smile with a sigh.

"Yeah, you're right. This sucks." He deadpanned, and looked towards the door, "I didn't know they'd set these kinda rules. I mean I knew they'd be a little cautious, but...this?"

"They do think I'm some sort of child-abandoner." I reasoned, thinking of the distrust that still lingered in their eyes, trying to mask it for Jack. Distrust that I couldn't completely refute.

"I mean, Pitch I totally get, but you? You're harmless!" Jack exclaimed, hands in the front pocket of his hoodie and leaning back, resting on the bed post as I let a trail of sand twirl through the air around me. Letting loose some power, some tension, _anything_. And thought of the man they'd escorted, in a much rougher way, down an opposite hall. Pitch, the man I knew from stories. And vice versa.

"Excuse me? Pitch couldn't darken a lightbulb right now." I didn't see Jack's face until he didn't respond, looking back confused to see his face mirroring mine.

"What do you mean?" He questioned, as if he really didn't know... I leaned forward to get a better look, as if his face would answer my questions. As if he really didn't... My eyes widened and the sand twirrled quickly around my head, dusting across red hair in front of my eyes and then mirroring the pattern on Jack's hair. He squinted and sat back, but I was still too focused. It clicked in my head, explaining things, explaining actions...and for a moment, I actually wanted to hold my tongue.

If I said anything, would they take advantage of it? Even Jack I'd only known for a few days. I couldn't say for certain how they'd act, what they'd do with it...with him. This man that I shouldn't care about, either. Honestly, if I stopped caring about strangers so much, maybe my life would be a bit simpler. At the very least, I wouldn't be imprisoned. That seemed like a nice step-up at the moment.

"You guys really can't see it? I know I didn't see him before, didn't see him when he was supposedly trying to take over the world, but...Pitch has lost a significant amount of strength. He just looks...tired. I mean, the man that I heard about would have fought back much fiercer than he did today. None of you thought that was odd?"

"...No."

"How are any of you still alive?"

Jack pouted, actually pouted, and said as he clutched the staff to his chest,

"Hey, not all of us are alive!" I felt my eyes go wide and tried to correct it, tried not to look so affrontingly surprised. Because I'd never thought that any of them would be...of course, I knew that it was possible, but the others just felt so...alive. They felt young, in the bodies they were born in, the bodies and souls they'd carried all their lives. Jack was different, felt different, but I'd never...I just assumed it was because he was _Jack_.

"Oh, Jack, I didnt...I mean, I'm sorry. I didn't know, I didn't think because you seemed so...alive. That sounds stupid. I apologize. I haven't spoken to anyone in millions of years." If there was an award for least-capable-of-maintaining-an-average-conversation, I'd won it twenty times over. I looked away from Jack to the window between us, seeing a landscape so breathtaking that, even now, I had to admit that this imprisonment wasn't as terrible as it could have been. Mountains. Snow. Clouds.

"Hey, it's alright,"Jack said, voice kind and almost chuckling, "kinda hard to tell with the whole 'breathing' thing..." He paused and I nodded, the little trickle of stardust floating between us lucidly. "...You wanna know what happened?" My head snapped his way and my mouth hung open for a moment. This was something certainly personal. Death being a bit of a touchy subject. Especially if it was, you know, _his_.

"Jack, you don't have to-"

"Hey, the way I see it, I got you into this mess. By the looks of it, until we decide what those things are and who's causing them, you're stuck with us. Might as well get to know each other, even if it's just us." He was smiling again, care-free. There had to be something else to this kid's smile if he was so willing to just give me the story of his death and still have it smooth on his face. I paused, and thought about what that meant, forgetting that I had to respond. Spending years in trees away from people made this a habit.

"Um- yeah, okay." Which was the lamest thing I could have possibly said in this situation. Jack just nodded, brushing over it and leaning back, drawing frost designs on the wall on his side of the window, as if he were going over what he had for dinner.

"I was sixteen. My sister, Jill, wanted to go out on the lake and try out some new ice-skates I'd just made her. She wanted them for her birthday, but they take a really, really long time to make, so by the time they were ready to go Winter was already ending. Our mother told us not to go, but man, Jill wanted to go out so badly. She'd begged me for hours until I convinced our mother that I'd keep her safe." Jack paused here, and my chest was already tightening. I gripped my ankles and decided to look out the window again.

"The ice was thinner than it looked, and in a few minutes I heard a 'crack'. When I looked around, there was this kinda spider-webby crack below her, and she looked so, so scared. I tried to calm her down. I was kind of the village clown in that I loved going around and playing with the kids. So I told her we would play a game, that she would take a few steps towards me and on the count of 'three' she'd be safe. I picket up this thing," Jack bobbled the staff in my perifrial, neither of us looking at the other, "and when I said 'three' I hooked it around her hand swung her to safety."

I let out a breath through my nose, chest caving. What I'd imagined wasn't, at least not yet, what had happened.

"...I'd swung her so we'd switched places."

My eyes were instantly on Jack, his smile still firmly there, but now a bit sad. A bitter-sweet sad.

"Oh, Jack..." I said quietly, but he instantly looked at me and lit his face up with a massive smile, one that I just couldn't wrap my head around. He turned on a dime, going from a terribly sad story to beaming like he'd just won something, like he hadn't given his life. He made me dizzy.

"Hey, I got to be a Guardian out of it! Three-hundred-and-two years and I still wouldn't do anything different. I mean, I was at the bottom of that lake for awhile, but I think my sister had a happy life. And now look at me!"

"Sitting in a room with someone who's said to have abandoned a child they were supposed to protect. Kind of ironic." I mused, and saw Jack's smile fall slightly. _Oh, you are just so rocking this, aren't you? Millions of years in isolation ain't showing one bit. Ten points to you. _

"Did you, though? I mean, you don't remember. Anything could have happened...right?" He asked, and I bit the inside of my bottom lip. My eyes went around the room, dark and filled with a dresser and nightstand. Beautiful carvings in the ceiling and walls. But I didn't really look at them, thinking about this, about how Jack had just told me something so personal and now here I was, thinking I couldn't do the same back...

"Anything, yeah." I nodded, and felt like such a terrible person because that's all I could say right now. Because Jack had stood up for me and, granted, got overzealous and brought me into this situation, but had been the first person to believe me. He deserved something, at least. "From what I remember, I adored the Man in the Moon. It's just flashes of memories, but he was more than my duty. I loved him like he was a little brother, we'd run and play. I remember making him smile, remember putting him into his crib...but that's it. Anything, you know?"

"No, I don't. I don't think you're the kind of person to do that." Jack said with such finality that it surprised me, but when I looked up he was cracking his back and changing the subject, "Anyways, it'll just take the others some time to realize that, too. Until then, trust me, I'll look out for you. Two peas in a pod! See they didn't trust me at first either, thought I was some punk kid."

"You are a punk kid."

"Hey!" He laughed, and I let the corner of my mouth twitch up just a bit. "I take offense to that-"

"Jack!" There was a soft knock on the door and Tooth's voice, cutting Jack off. Easily, he slid off the bed and walked to the door, opening it as I pulled my knees awkwardly up, looking over. He only had the door open partially, catching a glimpse of green in the crack of the door as his face got a different smile, his eyes getting almost softer. Were I not nervous, I may have remembered seeing that look in the faces of thousands of other boys and girls.

"Um, North says it's bed time and...well, Sandy's going to be guarding these rooms. He's done his rounds for the night, but he really does-"

"Alright, Tooth. It's not like she's gonna tear the house down, right Alice?" He asked, smiling playfully back at me. I gave a chuckle that was half-drowing half-wheezing. "See? Tell North I'm gonna take up my usual place. You wanna go get some coco?" He asked, twirrling the staff to rest on his shoulder. Tooth must have replied quietly, because his face lit up and he beamed back at me. "Night Alice! See you tomorrow!"

I held up a hand and nodded, watching him carefully step out of the room and close the door.

Leaving me alone in a room that seemed suddenly much darker, much lonelier, than it had with him in it. I looked outside again and saw the sun being to set, and carefully drew the thick, red curtain over the window. Just in case. And then the room seemed infinitely darker.

That night I burrowed under the covers and looked at the door, wondering if Sandy was really out there, wondering why Jack didn't want to know more, wondering if he'd changed the subject on purpose. I wondered a lot of things. But the one thing that kept me up was the man in a similar situation to mine.

Pitch, the man I honestly shouldn't be worrying about. Pitch, the man who'd been there when it happened. Pitch, the man who oozed evil and malicious intent. Pitch Black, the Nightmare King.

Who had no one like Jack to make the room seem lighter.

_-Pitch Black-_

"That is just...pathetic." The golden man silently snored, head resting on the wall beside the door and floating on that puny little cloud. I had half a mind to pop it, if only that wouldn't wake him. With a look that must have looked almost pathetically disgusted, I turned and walked silently down the hall. At the very least, I could still blend with the darkness that the Workshop provided, nestling in with the few shadows as yetis passed by, the darkness outside disrupted by the moon.

The moon that seemed exceptionally bright tonight. I'd walked what felt like minutes, but an overly-elaborate clock on a column next to a large window said it had been hours. I stopped, staying in the shadows as I gazed out at the glass, the window arching high above my head to the ceiling.

And, as always, he was there.

So far up above, making sure to look down on me both figuratively and literally. And he was just a man on a rock, a tiny speck that didn't even make its own light but leeched off the sun. Just a small mirror in the sky. And yet I could have sworn, after seeing him for so long, that today he looked a bit...preoccupied. He was looking at me, certainly, picking through the nets of shadows easily. But there was something else, something off-focus. He was looking for someone.

"Is she truly that important?" I asked, almost to myself, head cocked to the side. The small, fragile-looking girl with a sharp tongue and pitiful judgement of character. "You've gotten this far without her, whatever happened that fateful day. Maybe she's tied in with you and me, old friend. Maybe she isn't. Maybe she plays some sort of pivitol role, maybe she's just a background character. She doesn't remember a thing, so why all the fuss?"

I paused, mouth open as a thought wrapped into my mind, offering itself. My eyes flickered down, then back up, and I felt a bit of an upturn on the corners of my mouth. Oh yes, well, that's certainly plausible. The moon's light flickered a bit, imperceptible to anyone not looking. I took half a step forward and angled my head sideways, up at him, almost as if I could see that face. A rush took over, and I swore I almost laughed, because through all this turmoil this, _this_, could prove to be entertaining.

"She doesn't remember a thing...but _you do_." My voice curled over my words, and just as I said them a cloud appeared. It hadn't been there previously, but conveniantly ghosted over the moon and eclipsed it, casting the hallway in a darker shadow. This time, I did laugh. I laughed long and hard, and if anyone had been here now, they'd think I was a lunatic. Possibly, I was. But I was also a man who had to enjoy what few pleasures I was offered, and seeing him squirm, well...now that was wonderful.

"What are you laughing at?" I would never admit how quickly I side-stepped, caught off-guard by the small voice of the girl standing dangerously close. I hadn't heard a footfall, hadn't felt a presence. She just appeared like the cloud over the moon. Standing there, sweater far too large for her, red hair cut choppily and shorter than Frost's, face innocent and looking up at me curiously. Not judgemental, not assuming. Just curious. Something from eons ago had to be surpressed once more.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you that sneaking up on someone is terribly rude?" I tried my best to give her a look of disgust, but she only shook her head and blinked her eyes. Uneven eyes. I squinted a bit, seeing how a faint light hit them. One was green. As was the other. Only, the left one held a ring of silver around the iris, very faint and fading into the rest of the foresty-green, but certainly there.

"I wasn't sneaking up on you. Really, both of us are just sneaking _out_. I happen to come across you." She reasoned, and I waved a hand at her.

"Please, spare me. As if we're here on the same accord." I thought of Frost sticking up for her, thought of the Guardians trusting him, and something bitter slid down my gut.

"We're both being held in rooms against our wills. The Guardians wouldn't touch us with a long stick. Neither of us seem very good at speaking civilly with people."

I raised an eyebrow at her list. Then paused, scrutinizing. And again, came up with a frustrating cement wall of a person. Which was abnormal, especially for an individual whose job is to delve into a person's greatest fear and manipulate it in any way they see fit. That was a power they couldn't take from me. Even now, in this state, I could see it shimmering under their eyes, see it shift beneath their skin, feel it pulse in their veins. Fear, unique and strong in each.

Each except for her. Where my eyes would slide through, delve into, where a person would open before me and the shadows in the corners of their eyes and minds would splay out like a painting, there was a wall. It jolstered me at first, when all I could see were two green eyes and a face very young, very scared, and very, very, very ancient. Not in her face, but in those eyes. There were worlds behind them, lifetimes, stories of epic proportions. And yet I could see only shadows brushing the surface.

Nothing more. But she was afraid, afraid of something, I just couldn't quite grasp it. And I hated her for it.

And yet.

"I'm just a crazy old man. I laugh at windows." I deadpanned. Her eyebrows raised, creasing her forehead, and I could have pinpointed the moment she held back a laugh. She did that, I had also seen after a few days of shameless trailing. It did something to me that I didn't notice at the time. Something small. Something monumentally small.

"You don't look old."

"Neither do you, dear. But I must say, you're older than most of us, aren't you?"

"We age magnificently." She threw back just as fast as I did, and I relished in a moment of almost calm. It had been long ago, if ever, that I'd been able to stand with a being and feel almost comftorble in a conversation. Maybe it was her shaky record. Maybe it was my delusionally weak state. Maybe we were both suffering cabin fever. Maybe this was some weird phase before I hated her rotten black guts just like the rest of them. But for now...it was comftorble. Laced with strange. Always the strange string that connected her to me, me to her, a string I couldn't quite pluck. Couldn't hear the melody.

"I don't think you're a strange old man, anyway." She continued, and it was then that I took note of just how in the shadows she was. Standing parallel to a column. "But I don't know much about you." It was not a statement alluding to anything. She wasn't asking for a backstory or diatribe. Just a statement from a peculiar girl. I felt, in a rare moment, compelled to reply.

"Neither I about you. Strange, how we were supposed to play such pivotal roles in the other's history... Speaking of which, you weren't lying, were you?" One green eye, one silver-laced eye, both looking down at the floor. Casting sideways. Flicking at the window before falling back to me. I knew she was old, ancient even, possibly older than I. No younger than the stars in space. And yet now, she looked every bit a small child.

"No, I wasn't. I don't recall a thing afterward, and barely a thing before...do you?" The question was quiet and I almost didn't catch it. It took me a moment to respond, and when I did it was far less stable than I wanted it to be.

"Do I remember the Dark Ages? I ruled them. I thrived in them. And yet I can't recall anything more than darkness and screaming. Must be the old age getting to me. Do I remember a time before? A time after? Darling, just a light and then this infernal planet." I lied. And she took it, nodding without hesitation.

I was the Nightmare King. I was the Lord of Fear. I was the Boogeyman. I was Pitch Black, who destroyed the cosmos and led the Dark Ages through to a mysterious finish.

And yet when she took my lie so acceptingly, a part of me felt terrible.

"I should get back. So should you, old man. The Guardians already think we're psycotic, genocidal maniacs." She mused, scratching the side of her head with a sleeve that fell over her hand. Everything seemed a bit too large for her. This Workshop. Her clothes. The worlds she held behind her eyes.

"Then go to bed. You're lucky I don't give you horrendous nightmares for calling me old." I called, as she began to turn. She paused at the corner, just a few steps away, and did something very strange.

She smiled over her shoulder. She held those back normally. She bit at them. If she gave anything, it was a smirk. But this, albeit small, was a smile. It squinted her eyes just a bit, caused the beginnings of a dimple.

"Good night, Boogeyman." She left without another word, and I watched as a trail of silver dust fell from the wall, right where her fingers had touched. It drifted to the floor, and once it did, the shadows around it flinched back. Circles around a pile of dust, as if it all remembered. Remembered a time when they were at was. I reached a hand out, but they merely quivered in my direction.

I had lied. About one thing.

I remembered the Dark Ages. I remembered everything. It was a time I escaped to, a time when I was King and every living thing knew I existed. It was woven into my very fabric. And maybe I did not remember her, the flash may have been all that I remembered, but I did recall her kind. Thousands. Millions of others. I remembered them, remembered the dust that seemed so innocent with her. Remembered a time of war. What she had used it thus far, even with the nightmares that weren't mine, it was nothing. Nothing compared to the Dark Ages.

But I'd held my tongue when she asked. It wasn't as if the information was important, wasn't as if it would explain what happened in those short few moments. It was a passing fact, if that. And yet I did not speak it. Yet I felt terrible for lying, while telling her the truth seemed impossible. I was the Nightmare King, and yet I could not pinpoint a fear that must have been so obvious.

I did not need rest, I needed clarity.

But rest would come first. Clarity much, much later.

_-?-_

"What happens when the pawn blocks the Queen? When it gets too close to the King?" The nightmare looked up, eyes red and flaming, but hollow of emotion. Void. I ran a hand through the sharp silt along a ribbed neckline. Peering up at the moon glaring down at me.

I smiled.

"The Queen takes the pawn, of course."


	8. A Sky Full of Nightmares

_-Nicholas St. North-_

Neither of them sat down. Both stood, Pitch glowering at me with his dark, dark eyes, face twisted into a scowl. His hands were tied in front of him with thick ropes of dreamsand, Sandy himself holding the end of the two loops in one hand, floating by my side. I felt him watching, felt all the Guardians watching Pitch more than the other one. Which was very, very odd. Considering pasts, grievances and crimes, the other was much more the aggressor, much more the threat. Infamous, past this world. Past this universe. When people thought of this person's face, of this person in general, the most hideous of beasts manifested. A being that consumed light and good and spread nothing but hate and cowardice. Unfeeling and cold.

But Alice was none of these things. Not yet.

Which was why I was...perplexed. To say the very least. Alice, from what I saw and what she showed us, was no monster. What we expected was a beast, yet what we saw was a small girl. A babushka of a person. Her clothes were a bit too large, her eyes too bright, her mannerisms too scared. She was not fitting our image, our definition, and yet she was everything she was accused of. She had been there. Claiming not to remember it did not deferr it happening...yes?

I did not know. Jack did, maybe, but Jack was young. So young, so naive, and still learning the world and how it worked. How the people in it worked. How, though she seemed innocent and fragile now, Alice could very well be hiding something. Hiding everything.

"Bunny and I have been...discussing." I began, seeing the always-disgruntled Pooka pouting in the corner. "We are keeping safety of all in mind. This threat, this new danger posed to children of the Earth, es no game. Es something we have never faced before, es more than we think. I can feel it's evil...in my belly." I tapped the trusty stomach, always knowing, always right. Alice whispered something to Jack with a concerned look, and his eyes brightened, jaw clenching to hold a laugh. I continued on, ignoring.

"Es too dangerous in circumstances to allow Pitch and Alice alone-"

"North!" I held up a hand, my belly feeling something considerably heavier as the look of sorrow crossed Jack's face. I'd know, as had Aster, that Jack would not be so happy with this portion of news. Tooth and Sandy could take it, possibly even Pitch and Alice would comply. There was no choice for them.

But Jack, who was the reason they were here in the Workshop in the first place... His relentless need to see the good in people was a wonderful thing. In fact, the only thing that separated him from us. He could befriend everyone. Had, in fact, since he'd come here. Spirits who finally took notice instantly fell into his charm, looking past any of their deformations or seasonall complications. Jack only saw good. Only gave fun. And that was a beautiful thing, something I wanted him to hold close and dear as long as he lived.

But it was also dangerous, and we had to protect him from it sometimes. Yes, maybe there was good in Alice. I would never say, but maybe, just maybe, there was some good in the one who orphaned Manny. And somehow, that was all Jack could see. He did not see the possibility of evil, of danger. I would not allow that to harm him, allow her to take advantage of him. Jack was ours.

"Es precaution. One of us is to be with them at all times, and they are never to leave Workshop unless supervised. Es fair, yes?"

"Oh yes, imprisonment. What could scream 'equality' more?" Pitch Black was acting as in-control as a man could who was chained to his worst enemy. Powerless, and captured. All he had left was hatred and bitterness. It oozed from his pours, snapped at me from his eyes, dripped off his tongue in the form of words aimed to wrap around my throat and squeeze. I composed myself, aware of Jack still standing next to Alice and gaping, shifting uncomftorbly. The room got colder.

"Imprisonment es harsh word. Think of it as...home arrest."

"_House_ arrest, you inarticulate brute."

Pitch was in a bad mood today. But that would change nothing.

"...Can I have first shift with Alice?" Jack asked, voice quivering with hope. I looked over, Jack biting back a pleading smile, Alice avoiding eye contact with any of us. In fact, she now aimed her eyes at the floor and just stood. Still as a statue.

"'Course you'd wanna. Why would we let her alone with-"

"Es fair deal." Aster's eyes went almost wide enough to make me laugh, if something heavy did not sit in my belly. The feeling of foreboding, that made me want to reach out and take Jack's shoulder, to tell him that this was dangerous enough as it was, that we were pushing a limit. But he was so happy, so fast, over something so incredibly small. He was every bit a child now, and even Alice looked up at him.

But her smile was not large. It was not true. It was heavy, it took effort, and it was holding something back. It was just real enough to convince Jack, but to someone older and wiser, it was...burdened. And for a moment, she looked every bit of her age. An eons-old being in a child's body.

I glanced to Aster, and he nodded. Not enough to see if you were not looking for it. But he understood, he straightend up and took in a breath, eyes flickering over to Tooth, who had avoided all conversations.

We were allowing this chance for Jack. If Alice did anything, anything to Jack or anyone else, this chance would be revoked.

Action would have to be taken.

_-Alice-_

"So...what_is_ that stuff?" I spun a small tornado of silver dust, funneling on the tip on my pinki finger. It shifted along itself, swirrling and sounding like a child running their fingers through a sandbox. The clouds blocked out the moon above, safely thick and lasting over the Russian sky. No visibility in or out.

Jack crouched next to me on the top of a colorful cathedral, the topmost spire like an upside-down raindrop. We both sat/crouched on the curved portion, the entire beautiful city splayed out before us with flickering lights and the peaceful, softened sounds of humans at night. Laughter, muffled conversation, children running indoors for meals. All from St. Basil's cathedral. And it all seemed so real, so solitairy and yet connected. Connected to the city, to the lights, as if this were a thing that everyone did. Just sat and looked at something beautiful. It almost seemed like the world wasn't complicated.

"It's stardust." I mentioned simply, spinning my finger in a large circle and then splaying it out before me, throwing the dust off into the sky. It shot out as far as momentum would let it, and then fell slowly before us. A small, concentrated snowfall, without the snow.

"So is that kind of like Sandy's dreamsand? Only...for stars?" Jack sounded so confused that I had to smile a little bit. I sat back, looking over at him and shot some of it his way. He flinched a little in surprise, eyes wide but feet staying in place. The dust, playful as ever, twirrled around the staff and shot into his hair, ruffling it like a puppy rolling in grass. Like that, Jack's face broke into a bright smile and he laughed, shaking his head but not getting any of it out.

"Hey! Cut it out! Alice!" I rolled my eyes good-humoredly and flicked my wrist, the sand shooting from Jack's hair to my hand, breaking into trickles that danced down my hand and into my sweater to stay in the fibres. Jack recovered from laughing and nodded. "Okay, so it's not the stuff Sandy uses to put people to sleep. So what, is it dust from the stars? Like you take a cheese grater to them?" I snorted, covering my mouth and shaking my head.

"N-no!" I said, half-laughing and reining it in, "To be honest, I don't remember anyone explaining it to me. I really don't remember anything, let's just assume. But I have this weird recollection, like I know but I don't remember _how_ I know." I tried, looking back up at the sky to make sure the cloud cover remained thick and blanketed. That the only light came from the streets and the homes. "It...it _is _the stars. It's what they're made of, what makes them glow and live and thrive."

"North told me, right after I met you, that you came from these...oh man, what did he call them...'celestial beings'. You guys created the stars in the sky, right? You guys fought against the darkness...hey! Maybe that's why this stuff works so well against the new nightmares!" Jack exclaimed, and I looked down at my sleeve, catching a flash of dust as they trickled down my forearm. Playing, unseen.

"I don't remember any of that, but that's what I've been told. Maybe this stuff did used to make stars...but not anymore, not with me at least. As for the other thing...I'm not sure. This only really was used to defeat the nightmare men, right? This stuff is different. You know how Pitch just took Sandman's dreamsand and put darkness into it. That's not the same thing as the living, breathing darkness that took over. Maybe this is just like your ice. Maybe it's just a really, really effective weapon."

"I dunno, it worked too well...wait. You said it didn't work with you, but what if there are others?" Jack's voice was getting excited, his eyes widening as he sat next to me, looking out into the clouds above. My eyes followed his. Two pairs of eyes looking at the rolling, indigo clouds. One in amazement, the other in trepidation.

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about the same things Jack was just realizing. I'd had the Earth's entire existance to think about it. Think about everything, in its time and place. What happened and why. If I was the only one. If there were anymore up there. And if so, why they hadn't come and got me. If maybe I really had done something that bad they they just...didn't want me anymore.

"I don't know. Maybe. Any new stars lately?" I asked, wishing my voice didn't sound so heavy, hugging myself tightly and wishing I wasn't the one here who took everything and made it sad. Made it terrible.

Wishing I had an answer to any of Jack's questions, and wasn't so incredibly lost.

"Dunno, you seen any?"

"No." Silence. I looked over at Jack, wondering what he was thinking and if he were searching for stars on this thickly-clouded night. Instead of seeing a squinting, white-haired boy, I saw a perplexed boy who couldn't possibly fathom what I'd said. I drew back defensively, cocking my head to one side. "What? Stop giving me that look."

"There were, like, _millions _of stars out last night! There always are at the Pole!" He reasoned, and it was one of those moments where I realized that Jack could not possibly follow my train of thought if I hadn't said anything aloud. I ducked my head down and busied myself with the fraying ends of my sweater, shifting my feet closer to me and pausing, working up the words. Then pausing because yes, I realized to an extreme extent how incredibly pathetic they would sound. I was just glad the clouds were thick enough to buffer my voice.

"...I um...I kind of don't go outside at...at night, you know? Moon and things." Moon and things. A+ Alice, great job.

"Oh." Jack said, and a beat later continued, "Well I haven't counted any less. Then again, I haven't counted more. I haven't counted. I'm not a lot of help here." He sighed at his own uselessness while I looked at him, at this boy, in complete and utter shock. He wasn't trying to change the subject. He wasn't trying to avoid what I'd just said. To Jack Frost, the fact that I avoided his creator and the man I had possibly orphaned was completely normal.

"Hey-!" Jack exclaimed, but didn't finish, shooting up to his feet with the staff at the ready, all in one swift and startled movement. I jerked back, taking a sharp intake of breath and jumping to my own feet, stardust shooting out in an almost tornado-like fashion before I could calm it enough to settle around my feet. It shifted nervously as I looked around, skin prickling with a thick atmosphere of something being here.

"What? Did you see something?" I asked Jack without looking his way, eyes scanning the corners and folds of the Russian landscape laid out in front of us. The maze was suddenly less beautiful, more dangerous.

"I-I thought so...like, someone." He said, voice a bit shaky.

"Someone? Pitch maybe?" The fact that Pitch was the first person who came to mind when trying to figure out who would be roaming about suspiciously was probably a red flag. But at the moment, it wasn't. In fact, I almost wanted it to be him. Part of me prayed it was Pitch and not someone else, not one of the Guardians or a stranger or another nightmare. Pitch, the man I'd spoken to last night who seemed so different, so isolated, no fronts for the Guardians. He was a bad guy. A very very bad person.

But I wanted it to be him.

"There!" Jack didn't let me move before he was off, catching a blurr of blue to follow when I spun around and trailed after him. The wind whipped at my face, dodging through pillars and ripping through the sky behind Jack, arching across the chapel we'd just sat on and maneuvering quickly and sporatically through the direct center of the small village ahead of us. Jack would jerk to one side, and suddenly he would have taken a complete 90 degree turn, forcing me to slam to a halt and turn on a dime, shooting down whatever alley way he'd been led down.

There were moments when I lost him, when all I could depend on was the direction of the wind gusting behind him and the trail of abnormally cold air he left behind. The stardust beneath me ground into my skin, trying to keep up with where I was urging it towards, grating against my ankles and knuckles, the wound from before suddenly flaring up on my arm. I winced, wanting to check the bandage but knowing that any moment I wasn't looking at Jack meant a moment I would lose him.

With another insain, hair-pin turn, I broke out into the village center.

It was built like a circle with spokes, large with alleys branching off around the perimeter and a massive, stone fountain in the center. It was too cold for the water to be running, but below the large column where the water would arch from there was a pool of clear water. Or, now that Jack was perched on the pole, ice. It zig-zagged violently down to the pool, crackling as it completely iced-over, the small boy standing to his full height and looking around.

I touched down on the edge of the stone basin, easing down on the ice and panting up at him. His small body was tense, hand tensing and untensing on the staff at his side, brows tight and eyes dark.

"Jack? What did you see?" I shouted up to him, though he wasn't more than a few feet above me. I felt that if I spoke any softer, he wouldn't even achknowledge me. He was so dead-set on whatever he'd seen, and I knew that maybe I should be, too, but as I looked around and waited for his reply...I saw nothing but dark houses and alleyways.

"...I just...I think I saw one of the nightmares. The new ones." He muttered, sounding unsure and unsteady.

"Maybe you're just tired, Jack." I offered, the darkness around us thick and heavy. I paused a moment, biting my lower lip and tilting my head. All traces of urgency had left when I decided that no, I didn't feel anything strange here, but at the same time the darkness around us was a bit...almost too thick. I'd never been to this part of Russia before, and never when the clouds were this indigo-dark, so I could feasibly chalk it up to the environment.

But.

I threw a hand lazily in front of me, a cascade of dreamsand flowing out before me. For the first few feet, it just illuminated what I could already see. Then it reached the edge of the circle.

"...Jack."

"Yeah?"

"Don't move."

"What? Why-..."

I heard Jack's breath fall from his mouth in an abrupt exhale, my hand frozen in the air and keeping the dreamsand suspended as it inched around the edge of the circle. My eyes followed as far as they could. I could feel a painful fear stab at my lungs, all the air flowing out as I stood rock-still, straining for a way out, every nerve screaming at me. I wanted to run, wanted to dissapear, wanted to scream. Instead I stood there and looked.

At the hundreds of red eyes looking back at me.

"This what you saw?" I whispered, a stir coming from the shadowed shapes, a shifting, like rock-on-rock. The dreamsand cast a faint silver glow out, the eyes looking at it furiously. It could keep the first line back, maybe. But there were hundreds of lines. Possibly thousands. From what I saw now, it was an endless sea of nightmares, churning and hooving and snorting almost silently, but so tremendously, that I couldn't fathom how many of them were actually there. All I knew was there there was an army.

And the eyes were quickly shifting towards us.

"...Jack, when I say to go, I want you to go. No looking back." I whispered, and the stardust around us began to thicken just the slightest. The nightmares noticed, and a few of the front ones let out that horribly, sickening moan, the earth-shattering growl that shook your bones.

"But-" I jolted my arm forward and closed my fist, the stardust shooting out like arrows into the alleyways in a storm of silver, shadows, and screams.

"JACK NOW!"

I didn't get the chance to see if he'd left. I jumped to the floor and spun around, arms out wide. I'd spent my fair share of time dancing in the rain, and when I learned that I could do this I didn't figure it would be good for anything other than entertainment. Than making rain look pretty.

This was one of those terrible moments when I was wrong.

The waves of silver flew out, slamming into the walls of nightmares that rose up and out of the alleyways and above me. I kept spinning, gritting my teeth and squeezing my eyes shut, a sharp snapping sound making the sand suddenly flinch and flow upwards, creating almost a dome-like tidal wave above me. I stopped spinning and, in a fraction of a second, looked up.

It was like the sky was raining nightmares.

They poured in through the thinning circle on top of the churning dome around me, their screeches and groans and whinneys and growls slamming up against the walls and fluming down towards me in a column, all writhing and flailing towards me. It was a moment where I was running on pure adrenaline, nothing else functioning. My arms flew upwards and I shot as much sand to the sky as I could, kicking up from the ground and shooting up to meet the column head-on.

My arms buckled when I ran into the first few, the backs of my hands pressed against my forehead, the sand just barely a layer between me and the beasts tearing at it, crying out as it burned them. I pressed upwards at a horribly slow pace, grunting as my mucles forced and shook. All around me there was just a churning darkness, a vortex of teeth and hooves and sharp edges and nightmares and black sand and shadows. And I felt that I was right in the center of it, eyes squeezed shut with exertion, the layer of dreamsand wearing dangerously thin. All of it. Pressing in on me, from all sides, and I was ready for the familiar sting of teeth penetrating flesh, breaking bone, this time from thousands of teeth.

Something broke through the sand above me and wrapped tightly onto my wrist, and in a last ditch effort I balled up, something tight in my stomach. And released. At the same time whatever was holding me released and equate amount of energy.

And there was a strange silence.

Peaceful, almost, if muffled images of what I'd been in were playing in my mind, muted in my ears. And there was a light.

And for a moment I wasn't in Russia.

And there was a different kind of light. And a different kind of darkness. And a woman's voice, breaking through all of it.

_"Go...go..."_

"Alice, GO!"

I snapped harshly back and, responding only to Jack's voice and not the dots that created my vision, shot upwards as fast as I could. The sky bit at me and the cold stung through my clothing, bones creaking and splintering, stomach twisted and tight until I was almost positive I was going to be sick. I couldn't think, couldn't comprehend, could only continue going forward with on hand still in front of me, forearm blocking the helpless wind and eyes squeezed shut. I swore I was going to keep going forever.

The hand was still around my wrist, and it tugged on me until I was forced to spin around, prying my eyes open.

Jack.

It was Jack.

His eyes were big and scared, and he was panting. Cold puffs of breath formed clouds between us, and I couldn't have said that I looked any less frantic. Looking at it from an outsider's point of view, we both looked absolutely disheveled. Jack's hair was sticking up more violently than normal, his face was tinted blue, his hoodie was crumpled and one sleeve was up higher than the other one. I could feel my own hair sticking up in the back, could feel how tight my face was. We just looked at each other for a moment, judging the other's state of nerves.

Jack was the one with enough state of mind to speak first.

"Y-you alright?" I swallowed and nodded, indicating himself. He nodded. No one was hurt. But we should have been, we should have been severely hurt. My chest was tight and I shook my head, Jack letting go of my wrist and flying a few feet away, looking back at where we'd come from. I looked straight down.

Another pair of eyes looked up at me.

They were not red. But they froze me with the same fear as the others had. In fact, they were dark. Very, very dark, and though they were meters away from me, I could have sworn they were...familiar. Not Pitch, no. But...close. Darker, but very close. I didn't move, I didn't breathe a word.

The man looked up at me as if he expected as much, and his silouhette was so dark that all I could make out was black hair, slicked back, and white skin that had tones of shadows in it, a dark patch on his cheeks and temples, under his eyes. That was all I saw.

Eyes, skin, and hair. His facial structure was blurred, his body hidden in the darkness of the trees below me. But his eyes. Oh, his eyes were bright and they were looking up at me with something that I could have sworn was pride. Gleaming, dark and bright at the same time, spots in the shadows.

He was gone so fast that when Jack got back to me, I wasn't sure if he was real or an image my head created to try and piece itself back together. I was so confused, so disoriented, that I could barely make out the words,

"North Pole." Jack nodded, and paused before he turned.

"Stay close, alright? I need a bodyguard." If every there had been a perfect match for the Guardian of Fun, it was Jack Frost. And I could appreciate his moment of trying to snap whatever fear strung us. I really could. But I could only manage a nod at this point, because I wasn't out of the fray. I wasn't out of the crowd of nightmares, my body still shook, and even when I closed my eyes and shook my head, those eyes were still there.

The man's eyes.

_-Pitch Black-_

It was like a loose string pulled taught through my core. I snapped up, eyes flickering to the sky, hands gripping the railing before me. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

"Oi, what's up with you?"

It was materializing on my tongue, forming something that I couldn't think of. It was a chord played through me, humming in my ears and prickling at my nerves.

"Pitch? Es something matter?"

My hands tightened further as the name slipped off my tongue. Nothing serious to my tone. A question. A realization. A perplexment. Because I did not know it, and yet something inside me was so sure. Something that stretched back eons.

"Alice."

Oh yes, something was terribly wrong.


	9. A Sleepless Moment

_-Still trying to update faster with this crazy schedual of mine! Thank you all for being so patient, and enjoy 3 -_

_-Alice-_

There was an uproar at the Workshop, permiating the walls before we even got inside. It was alive, yetis marching outside and the sounds of thousands of voices shouting over the other. It was an almost too-sharp contrast to the numb silence Jack and I had just flown through, and too much going on to fully remove us from the memory of torrents, shadows, churning and grinding all around us. It had been a few hours flight, but it was still there. In the back of our minds shadows still darted, the sounds bounced unevenly against our skulls, and we both paused on the lip of the outlook, peering down into the churning chaos below.

"What's going on?" Jack asked, his voice a bit hoarse from having said nothing for so long. North was shouting something, so I craned over a bit more to catch the edge of the overlook in my sight. North was still out of sight.

But Pitch was there.

And by the looks of it, something was troubling him. It didn't seem like it was that Aster was keeping a stern eye on him, despite chaos. Or even the noise around him. He was staring off somewhere else, brow knitted, lips tight, eyes dark and face struggling to remain even.

His eyes flickered suddenly, catching mine.

If Jack hadn't taken my arm to pull me down through the overlook, I might have flinched. It was like a light that you couldn't see, a string that you couldn't feel. A twinge, almost, that was gone before I could figure out what it had been, why it had happened. I lost sight of him when Jack pulled me into the Workshop, but when we swooped down onto the overlook amidst a crowd of frantic Guardians, Pitch wasn't looking at me anymore. He was facing us, yes, but looking off to the side.

His face was pure boredom, and had I not seen the way he had held it previously, I may have believed it.

"Jack! Es all safe and sound! Vat happened? Are you hurt? Phil, prepare infirmary and mug of coco! How many fingers?" North suddenly had Jack by his arm and was shoooting out questions faster than I could think of answers. Jack, in a similar prediciment, blinked for a few moments before easing out of North's grip and saying, one hand up to ward off more questions,

"Uh, yeah, safe and sound. I don't really know, no I'm not hurt, and...three." North stood straighter, brows still furrowed in concern, not buying Jack's chronologically correct answers. I would have said something at this point, would have interjected more information, but the room was suddenly far too small and the pull to get away from these people increased. And harshly.

Because there was too much going on, and their eyes were accusing me, even if they didn't know it, even Tooth whose eyes were worried and flickering, and the noises were outside and inside and when I blinked I still saw _those eyes..._

"Alice."

He said my name in one syllable. It floated through the noise and the blurring atmosphere, it broke whatever had just come over me, cut off the panic that had finally broken through the wall of my mind, and settled somewhere between my eyes. The noises quieted. The eyes left me, or became more bearable. I blinked. The eyes behind my own were gone. I took a shuddering breath as I looked at Pitch.

"What happened?" His voice was soft, and even, and it almost served to blanket the noises around him, because the yetis stopped shouting, the elves stopped moving, and the Guardians stopped muttering. It was just him, looking at me neutrally, as if he'd done this before. As if he understood. It was like there was a rope that he'd cast out, giving me something to hold onto, something to pull on. I bundled the ends of my sleeves into my palms and squeezed, looking only at him and holding that rope for dear life.

"...We were in Russia. Jack saw something first, and went after it. When I followed, we ended up in a small section of the little town and..." I breathed, "They were in the alleys. Hundreds of them, waiting for us for I don't know how long." The other Guardians tensed around me, but just as I started to wander to look at them, something flickered in Pitch's eyes. Something dark-yellow. Something light-silver. Something serious that pulled taught on the rope, drawing me back to him. Focusing.

"I...I tried to push them all back. I can't remember a lot of it. Just...there was a lot of noise, and the stardust started to thin out, and there we just too many of them. Then, I guess, Jack pulled me out of them and we just flew. But they didn't follow us, so we stopped above this patch of trees." I stopped there, not knowing what words could possibly describe what I'd seen. Describe him. But Pitch wasn't letting me stop, because he knew, impossibly he knew, and though my breathing was heavy and my fists were so tight it hurt, I looked at his eyes demanding I go on...and did. Could.

"I looked down, and there was a man looking up at me." Jack shifted in my perifrial, but was silent, "I...he was in the shadows, so I could only see his face, but he didn't look familiar. He looked...I don't know, he looked _dark_, really dark, and he had these eyes that...I don't know. He was gone pretty fast, I couldn't really see him but...I think he's the one doing this. These nightmares and everything."

It was a pin-drop silence when I stopped, when that look in Pitch's eyes finally broke and the bleeding yellow and silver dropped back to their normal shades. When he leaned back and blinked, one eye squinting a bit, head tilting just so. I found that I wasn't shaking. Which, given the situation, I had every right to. I should have been. But...that rope was still there, if less so, and I was still holding onto it.

"...Ya didn't see the guy?" Aster asked, voice quiet and skeptical but...this time there was something else in it. I couldn't pinpoint it, but it was there, and it was like a wall was keeping back the painful hate and the vapid skepticism. This was just...biased curiosity.

"I saw his face, but it was blurry. What we'd just gone through, all of that chaos, it was hard to really see anything." I explained.

"Why didn't you tell me that you saw him?" Jack asked, tilting his head. I shrugged at him, knowing that he understood but feeling the need to voice it, to let the others know.

"I couldn't think. I just...I had to get you back here, where it was safe, first." Tooth was behind Jack, and feathery brows raised. Sandy was next to her, and something about his demeanor changed, as well. He floated a bit lower, his eyes were a bit wider, day-dreamier. Self-concious, I shrugged again and released the sleeves, burying my hands in them and playing with the inside yard, still laced with grains of silver dust.

"Was...very smart. Could more have followed?" I gave a long look at North first, before I answered. I had to see, to make sure there wasn't anything hidden in there. Making sure he didn't want me to answer incorrectly and incriminate myself, though how I could I didn't know. But he seemed just as uncomftorble as me, arms crossed and brow furrowed, eyes dodging from Jack to me. We both shook our head.

"No. No, I don't think so." I answered.

"After what Alice did to them, I doub't they'd want to follow. You should have seen her, it was like...some sort of explosion. This giant field of sand, and it was...man, it was pretty awesome." Jack was smiling now, leaning on the staff with both hands wrapped around it, recovering as if he hadn't just been ambushed by thousands of hell-horses. Sometimes I thought that maybe Jack had suffered some sort of head trauma before I met him.

Despite that, I saw the kind of fear in his eyes that had been there before, just filtered through a smile and an attempt to ease the situation. His eyes were dodging around, never settling on anything, hopping to and fro as if he could find some sort of answer in the corners of the Workshop.

"Alice fought them?" Tooth asked, delicate and inching forward just a bit. Large, violet eyes looked up at me. She was sizing me up in the most polite way possible. There was a silence following her, and I looked around, realizing the question was directed at me. And then there were the eyes.

I nodded, Pitch looking at Aster who was looking at me with something a bit deeper in his eyes, wrapped up in thoughts. One hand toyed with the sleeve of the other, almost positive that this confrontation would be the sole reason for the sleeves fraying completely off. North stroked his beard, nodding and saying to Sandman,

"It...could be possible...that there es other force behind all of this. Sandy?" The Sandman thought a moment, tapping a tiny finger against his chin, until he finally looked up and shrugged with both hands, a large question mark above his head. _Maybe. _Maybe. Yeah, maybe.

"We're not really gonna believe just her, are we?" Aster asked, but with less venom in his voice than before. Now, the strong and vicious Pooka seemed almost...cautious. As if the bravado from before had worn off, though there was no reason for that. I was still small, I was still scared, and I was still untrustworthy. So why did he look so...timid. That was my thing, and it played a bit unsettling on his face.

"...No. We are going to bed, yes? Get good night's rest, talk about in morning." North insisted, just as Aster was about to protest. I didn't see him, too busy looking at the yeti already walking towards me to lead me to my room. But at the last part, the inflection of his voice changed. Maybe Jack didn't hear it, maybe it was just supposed to be between North and the other Guardians, but I knew that they weren't going to bed just yet. They were going to be up for awhile. They were going to talk.

_About me._

__I shook my head and walked in front of the Yeti, whose arm was out behind me to both lead and corall me. Normally I wouldn't mind, normally I'd ignore him and look at the paintings on the walls and think of a time when things were simpler, before Jack, before the Guardians.

Before.

The Earth was green. It was quiet. It was so, so quiet. And beautiful. The sky was a shade of blue that no one today could remember, and the leaves were fresh green, and life was so thick and rich all around you. I remembered standing on top of mountains, I remembered pretending that I was back in the stars that even I scarcely recalled. I could stretch my arms out in the sun, and feel that at least one thing was right.

I had no memory of a past life, or of any moment before a soft valley of grass singed by some sort of impact. Opening my eyes in a new lifetime to a sun up above that at first hurt, hurt so bad, but became beautiful. Unfurling my fingers to feel the warmth, and wondering for a moment if this was so terrible afterall. Wondering if my previous life could have been this beautiful, this peaceful, and when I began to recall bits and pieces of space and stars and the little boy that I would learn was the Man in the Moon...

A door slammed behind me, and I jumped, not knowing when I'd entered my room or even that the yeti was still there. In my mind, I'd retreated back to an Earth before beings. But I couldn't do that now. Not in here.

Everything was suddenly so dark. And the shadows felt alive.

My chest tightened and I pressed my back to the door, watching them flicker in my mind while the ones right in front of me remained thin and dark and still. But in my head, behind my eyes, red eyes projected out in front of me. They stood from the floor and crawled from under the bed, they reared and thickened and moved through the room. I would close my eyes, try to tell myself that the humming fear wasn't real, that this wasn't real, because it wasn't. The room was silent, and still, and the only thing out of place was me.

_-Jack Frost-_

"She's telling the truth."

"But didja see anything? Did you, with yer own bloody eyes, see this guy?"

"Did you see Pitch ever leave? No. And I can bet you that Alice wouldn't have sent those things on herself."

"...Bugger, I dunno. S'all shady ta me, too many circumstances."

I leaned back against the door, looking as the others shifted together. The fire was roaring beside me, keeping the shadows flickering. I'd settled, but they still looked weird, dancing and jumping around. It didn't make it easier that Pitch was in the Workshop, but...I thought about what Alice had said to me. About Pitch getting weaker. And honestly...I could see how she was right.

For one thing, he was still here.

The Pitch that I'd fought, the one that travelled through shadows, the one that shattered the staff in two...that wasn't the same Pitch as now. And if I thought about it too hard, it made something twist in my stomach. A knife of guilt, a stab of pity, because what did those nightmares have to do to Pitch to make me believe, without a doubt, that he couldn't be the one behind this?

That he was too weak to now...and possibly, ever again.

_-Alice-_

Weaving through the sand streams was easy enough. I just had to remember that they were there, that they made no sound at all and their glow was just faint enough to chase the shadows from the hallways. I stepped to the side to avoid one, ducking beneath another as I breathed in...out...in again. Things had gotten considerably better after I'd managed to open the door without disrupting the stream of golden sand that crept up under it. Walking these halls was...calming.

It was the Workshop in pure and complete silence.

I drifted a hand just above a stream next to me, raising it and dipping it with the flow, breathing along with the softness of it all. I'd left my sneakers back in the room, walking in thin socks along the cold floor, the hems of my pants brushing the floor. And I tried to remember the world I'd begun in again, but that time had passed. Because the Guardians had come, and others as well, and the humans and the quiet had given way to noise and buildings and beauty and pain. Nothing was simple, though there was extreme beauty. There was no stopping it.

So I just watched from trees.

"A bit late, isn't it?"

His voice did not make me jump. I was too focused on keeping my hand a hair's breath away from the golden stream of sand. Though, I did duck under it, turning so that my back was to him and standing still, hand out.

I didn't know when the agreement had come between us that we could stand like this at night. Was it the first or third night time coincidence? Was it from last night, or had this been set up in the beginning? It was vague, it was unspoken and jumbled. But it was there, silently, as we were both here as borderline captives and keeping things from not only the others, but each other as well. We had nothing in common, and yet what allowed us to stand like this was an unspoken connection. That eons-old string that I still felt, somewhere, and possibly he felt as well.

He was the Nightmare King, and I was an infamous traitor. But we were all the other had here, and we were barely even that. Just two criminals alone in the dark, who couldn't sleep.

"I wasn't lying."

"I know." I looked up at him, for just a moment, just because he'd sounded so incredibly sure about something that even I was on the fence about. Not if I were lying or not, but...something within the context of the whole situation. He was looking out the window, at the moon up above. I was standing in the shadow of the column next to the window, leaning my back against it. My hand drifted upwards.

"Why would someone want to use your nightmares?" I inquired, tilting my head, wondering what he wasn't telling. Because, if there was one thing I knew, it was when people were hiding something. Pitch Black was hiding a lifetime of secrets.

"Can't imagine why. Probably some obsessed fan." He mused, and I stopped the corner of my mouth from flitting up. "Although," He went on, "The question we should be asking is what those beasts are in the first place. Because, let me assure you, my nightmares would never look so ghastly. Those things, they have no soul, no original thought. They just move and eat and destroy...it's enough to make this King cry." I rested my head against the column and kept my hand out.

"I know what the Guardians did to you." I said before I could realize that maybe it was a sensitive subject, too entranced by the golden sand, "What happened to the nightmares afterwards?"

Pitch was silent for a long enough time for me to wonder if what I'd asked had actually offended him. I glanced up quickly, and paused. His eyes were still towards the moon, but they weren't focused. They were somewhere apart from us, on another Earth or looking at different stars. And while he was, seeing that he was oblivious to my exisance for at least now, I looked at Pitch Black. I really looked at him.

His silouhette glowed in the moonlight, but not one silver streak could lighten the shadows on his face. The deep circles beneath his eyes, the hollow dip of his cheeks, the shadows along his temples and into spiked-back hair, none of them could be touched by the light that fell on his nose and chin and cheekbones. The grey skin was still an odd grey, the thin lips were still just a shade lighter, and the grey eyes were still piercing. The cloak was still and his hands were folded neatly behind him like a soldier waiting. To anyone else, he would look like a very oddly-colored, tired man.

I thought he looked like a monument of a person.

"They fled once they had nothing left of me, or just bare scraps that they could have fed off of." He answered and for a moment I was confused, forgetting that I'd even asked a question to begin with. When I remembered, blinked a few times and offered, though knowing he was thinking the same thing,

"Could the man I saw have found them? Could he have...changed them?"

"Darling, it took me years to even make a rough skeleton of one. For someone to take what I had and change them, there would have to be another, albeit much less impressive, me out there. And that just isn't possible." His tone lightened a bit, and he flickered his eyes back to the moon.

"Santa Clause was created by a tiny baby in the moon, and you think things are still impossible? Whatever made you the Nightmare King could have happened to this man."

"No, I assure you, it couldn't have."

His tone was so final that I bit back all words and swallowed them, teeth biting down on my lower lip. I couldn't even look his way, choosing instead the hands behind his back. Because those words held such a heavy weight behind them, the kind you knew you weren't supposed to pry into. And I shouldn't have, not then at least, but I couldn't suddenly help but wonder if Pitch Black had another life before this one. The Guardians had lives before this. I'd seen them, once or twice. But Pitch Black, the Nightmare King...

What kind of life must he have led, that would end him here?

"You talk an awful lot about this man that you saw, for someone who took a midnight walk because the thought of him terrified you." I was about to look at him, about to ask how, but he let out a smooth chuckle and shook his head, rolling his eyes condescendingly, "Oh, please. I may be weak, but I am still the Nightmare King, remember? I know what everyone's afraid of. All of those so-called Guardians, the little children they protect-"

"Me?"

"..."

I rested the side of my head on the column. My hair fell in my eyes. And I made a decision to trust him.

"You were guessing. But it was a good guess. I am afraid of that man."

"Which man?"

"No that's no fair, I was being generous and there you go, being greedy."

"If you tell me, I'll tell you."

He looked down at me, one almost invisible brow quirked, eyes trying to play off a burning curiosity. It was almost endearing.

The night was thick around us. The moon couldn't listen, he could only see, and he couldn't see me. The Guardians were gone, the sand was creeping, the shadows were still, and their King was waiting. My tongue felt heavy in my mouth, and my jaw was tight, as if it were telling me that this was not how I was going to say it. That I wasn't ready. That this wasn't the time, and he was lying.

But the strange thing was that he wasn't. Not to me. Lying, to me, was one of the strongest decisions a person could make. People did it, more so now than before, and I knew that Pitch was entirely capable of it. But he wasn't lying. I was trusting that he wasn't. Believing that he wouldn't put that kind of effort into it.

I didn't want to believe that he was lying.

And yet I couldn't open my mouth to speak.

"...You can touch that, you know." My eyes snapped up and locked onto Pitch, who was motioning back to my hand. I blinked. He had gone completely off course, ignoring...ignoring my silence. I took a deep inhale. He was avoiding the conversation. He didn't want me to tell him. He didn't want to make that kind of bargain now, even though that must have been the kind of thing he lived off of...

Maybe we were both just too tired.

"Touch what?" I asked, until I realized that my hand was still outstreatched. I looked over to it, seeing the grainy wave of dreamsand float unknowingly by. "But...isn't it the Sandman's? Won't it...I don't know, hurt?" And then he chuckled. But this wasn't his normal chuckle. It was real, and it was soft, and he was suddenly very next to me.

"Why don't you find out?" He whispered in my ear, eyes still fixed onto the stream. His face was so close that I could feel this breath on my cheek. But I felt no fear. In fact, it felt almost normal, as if this were how we were supposed to be. Pitch leaning over my shoulder, as if that's how it always had been. My hand was an inch from the stream. Had I waited there a second longer, I may have touched it.

Something twinged in my gut.

"Someone's coming." I whispered, looking down the hall. Pitch stepped closer to me without realizing, covering himself in shadows until I couldn't see him, just inches from me. I felt his heat, felt the prickling of energy nearby, felt the denseness of the shadows. But he was gone. There were footsteps coming closer, a whispering, delicate voice, and then a louder Russian accent.

I turned, knowing that if I moved now then I could easily be gone. But I stopped, silver dust beginning to lift up around me, and looked at an empty spot in the hallway.

"Goodnight, Boogeyman."

The footsteps were greeted with an undisturbed hallway.

_-?-_

I tapped a finger against the small rock, looking up at the sky. His eyes were there, too, I knew. But his weren't the ones I was focused on, not now. His were the goal. Silver. No, now two silvery gold eyes weren't what I was aiming for, weren't my main interest at the moment. That would come later.

Right now, I needed green and silver. I needed a red sweater and a horrific fear.

I looked down, at the beautiful Workshop below me, and sat back, basking in the moonlight, smiling. Because I knew more than he ever could. The moon hadn't seen the things that I had. Couldn't reach those corners she hid in. And he wouldn't, not until it was too late.

The snow was laid out in front of me like a perfect blanket, and I leaned my head back, closing my eyes and feeling it all around me. I had time. I had so much time. And I would lie here for eons.

But she did not have eons left. And that was one star I wanted to see go out.


	10. An Office and A Kitchen

_-Alice-_

_ It was dark. It was very, very dark. The kind of darkness that could have consumed, had it not been for the little flecks on the horizon. The tiny worlds of light that poked holes in the canvas, the small soldiers fighting a battle much larger than them. Because that's what the little lights looked like. Soldiers._

"Alice!"

"Jesus!" I shouted, jerking painfully and flopping over the edge of my bed, feeling surface give way to air, then hard and unforgiving floor.

"Nope! Just your friendly neighborhood Jack Frost!" Jack's too-chipper voice exclaimed over me, rolling onto my back as the sheets constricted around me. For a moment I was too disoriented to remember where I was, or why Jack was there, or what the front of my face felt like. I whiped a hand down my face to remember, groaning as things slowly started to fade back into place. Workshop, Jack, the attack last night, Pitch...

I'd come back to my room after the close-call, figuring that night couldn't be all too long and if I just waited then maybe, maybe morning would come. And it did, in the form of an exuberant frost spirit. Except I couldn't remember falling asleep, just closing the door and being hit with a strange, strong sense of exauhstion. Like every bone had walked a thousand miles, like I hadn't slept in years, all falling onto me at once.

"Jack, you had better have a very, very good reason for waking me. At all. What time is it?" I muttered, rubbing my back and feeling every eon of my age. Jack's chuckle danced above me as I fought my way out of blanket-purgatory, standing unsteadily on my feet. When I looked up, Jack was bouncing on his feet, staff behind him and a massive grin on his face. The kind of grin that was planning something. Or worse, _had planned _something.

"C'mon, let's go! North-uh-wants to talk to us." Jack's bouncing reached an unhealthy level, and I felt that if I kept looking at him I'd get whiplash. I narrowed my eyes, something uneasy warning me somewhere along my skin, poking at my skull and telling me that something was definitly out of order here. If North wanted to speak, Jack wouldn't be nearly this happy.

I held up my hands, but before I could get a word out Jack shot a hand forward and grabbed my wrist, pulling me to the door.

"Great! Hey North! She's coming!" Jack called out quickly, me almost tripping over the floor as he half-ran, half-flew down the hallway and out onto the overlook. I stumbled forward a few steps when Jack stopped, throwing my hands out in front of me to keep me balanced and crouching, still just in socks after having left my shoes last night. The floor was a lot slicker than I'd imagined.

"Great, now we've got the whole bloody circus togetha'." I heard Aster mummble, and looked over to see him standing next to Pitch, who also looked like he could have used a bit longer of a sleep. The dark circles under his eyes weren't worse, per say, and in fact I could see them lightening just a bit every day. It was the frown that was so exaggerated that accentuated them, pulling new lines onto his face than before, the shadows snaking out lucidly from the bottom of his robe. Aster, standing next to him, glared and gave an almost animal like growl at the silouhettes, stepping away.

I'd deduced that Aster was Pitch's main chaperone. I'd seen the others around him, but Aster seemed to be his main police force. Not that we'd really had any interaction outside of the Workshop, but the roles seemed to define themselves pretty evenly within. Aster for Pitch, Jack for me, and North for all of us. Tooth and Sandy... I looked over at the two, who both still seemed a bit trepidatious today but...more at ease, almost. Tooth was even flashing a smile or two at me, which I didn't have the time or capacity to return.

"What in the ever-living universe is so important that I had to be woken up at this hour?" Pitch mummbled, and I thought about last night and how maybe he'd been just as tired as I was. I flashed a look at him, but he was avoiding my eyes. I'd noticed that he was doing that a lot lately. Then again, I was noticing a lot of things lately.

"Es very, very, veeery important!" North exclaimed, and then paused, one hand up in the air as if he were holding the entire world in his palm. I waited. And waited. I looked over at Jack, who was still smiling, and then waited some more. And waited.

"_Bloody hell _get on with it!" Pitch shouted, and had I not been exauhsted I may have laughed.

"THIS!" North shouted, and lowered his palm to eye-level. And in it?

Three grains of sand.

"Fascinating." I deadpanned.

"Oh good, here I thought you'd actually done something important. If you'll excuse me, I have some brooding to catch up on-"

"Nay!" North shouted, thrusting his palm right up under Pitch's face. If I could have captured that picture of Pitch Black looking utterly revolted and appauled, I would have framed it and hung it somewhere where everyone could see it. "Look! Es black sand, found on Jack's hood shirt! Sandy retrieved it last night." North exclaimed, making Jack open his mouth to protest. I elbowed him, knowing where North was going with this and actually...interested.

This could be a disaster or a stroke of genius.

"So? What do you expect me to do about it?" Pitch demanded, shoving North's dwarfing hand away. The large Russian grew a bit serious, pointing with his free hand to the three, miniscule grains in his palm, large brows drawing together.

"Es yours, yes? Or a bit like yours. If we can find out what makes it different, what makes it new, then we can get step closer to finding out what it is this enemy wants." North explained, "Find out weapon, find out purpose behind it."

There was a heavy silence in the air, and Pitch's face was unreadable, eyes locked in onto North's palm. For a moment, it looked like he was frozen there, everything from his eyes to the shadows just...still.

And then he looked at me. Right at me, for the first time since last night, with such force that I felt myself lock up, and that string between us grew taught and hummed, strong and recognized, ancient memories stirring within it. Another lifetime being refrenced in one look. One, almost checking, look. And it lasted only a fraction of a second, but when he looked away and I blinked, I could still see little dots of gold and silver.

Looking at him was kind of like looking into the sun.

"That's not a terrible idea. If I could look at it closer, maybe." He said, tone even and almost that much more unsettling. And everyone except me seemed to sigh in relief and surprise, North blinking a few times before nodding. He stood a bit longer after that, as if he hadn't planned it out this far, as if he were expecting more of a fight. But there was something deeper in Pitch's eyes, something heavy in his words, layer and layers that I couldn't peel through in just a few seconds.

North finally stepped to the side, as if leading Pitch, and said,

"To office, then. I have many wonderful instruments for just such practices. Bunny, you come too. Tooth and Sandy, why don't you take...Alice, and go make coco? Yes? Wonderful." North always paused before he said my name. Almost as if he weren't comftorble with the idea that I even existed. Which I was okay with at the moment, because when I saw how things were being split up, something clicked in the back of my head.

Oh.

_You see? Never trust you. _

"What about me?" Jack was pouting and inching towards me.

"Too much has happened as of late. Go check, make sure children are feeling well, yes? Jamie and Sophie, they must miss their snowdays!" North was very, very good at persuasion.

Jack must have gone, and everyone must have started moving. But I was still standing there, North and Aster both passing me with static feelings. And I knew that he knew, that this was one of those layers that I couldn't get at before. But when he passed, my eyes followed his anyway.

We looked at each other until he was completely passed me.

_Of course he knows._

"Alice, why don't you come with us. We can, um...go into the kitchen?" Tooth asked, nodding downstairs. I finally looked up at her and saw a bit of desperation, a bit of anxiety...but in both her eyes and the golden ones of Sandy, I also saw a bit of regret. And that was enough to make me force a nod and begin to walk towards them. They visibly relaxed. And, strangely...so did I.

_-Pitch Black-_

Looking at her was like looking into the sun.

Even when I looked away, blinking brought back incomprehensible dots of memories that I couldn't even begin to fathom. A tie that was tightening, an image slowly growing sharper. I was remembering, and I was feeling something from _then_. Then, the time I spent so long burying deep, deep beneath my concience. Then, another world away. Then, another lifetime.

Then, and she brought it back without knowing.

Which was strange, because every time I looked at her it was as if she knew precisely what was going on in every moment. She was aware of every decision, of every movement, of every turn of a leaf. Like this world was far too open for her, and she was so unused to being so a_ware_. Like now. She knew.

When I walked past her, there was a mutual understanding. But instead of being calmed by it, instead of being intruiged by this girl that I'd met one night and had no clue of her importance in this story thus far, instead of feeling at ease, dread settled heavily in my gut. Dread, but hotter, dread but thicker, dread but wilder and angrier. It coiled up my spine and into my head, because I looked at her eyes and they were just...so big. And so unafraid.

None of the others would see. They couldn't possibly understand. But she was standing there so tall and so small and her eyes were following mine. Because we both knew. She knew why they were doing this, and she was unafraid. And it didn't slip my mind for an instant that it was because she wasn't surprised at this. She was expecting it.

And I shouldn't have cared nearly as much as I did. And maybe if I didn't know what it felt like when a memory from another lifetime was trying to peek through, maybe I really wouldn't care. Maybe I should have thought of that sooner.

Because now, the man from another lifetime was latched on with unshaking certainty that this girl was important. More important than I knew now. And though she wasn't my problem, though this lifetime didn't take up the troubles from my past, she was. She was my problem. She played a bigger role in this than I knew. And I was growing tired of fighting inside and out.

"So just how are we expectin' to find out what's crook with three bloody grains of sand?" The rabbit-man demanded once we'd entered North's office, a room too large and too full of unkept books. I fought my lip to curl and said, cocking my head up as much as I could to appear as if I wasn't half as pathetic as they didn't know I was,

"The point isn't for _you_ to do anything, now is it?"

I turned and took one of the grains with a quick pinch from North's palm, ignoring them both as I made my way to the window to see better. The white light from the snow hit the grain, and I lifted it to eye-level, looking for anything familiar. For anything incredibly not so. The grain was small, and I had to hold it with practiced gentleness between my middle and thumb fingers, had to remember what it was like to do this by candlelight.

I knew immediately what was different. I hardly had to look close, hardly had to look into it and dig through the shreds of fear that made this former-dreamsand into something so unique. Because there was more than fear in this. There was more than a little dream. More than a twisted nightmare.

The grain was charcole-black, where it should have been transparent. It almost vibrated in my fingers, and when I tried to feel the fear, something piggy backed it. Something I hadn't thought of, in my eons of existance. Never imagined that it could be possible. Never conceived of a way to do it. Threw away any shred of concience that would have suggested it. Because what I specialized in was fear. Fear was my buisiness. It built my kingdom and molded my throne. It was intwined in every fibre of my being.

But this wasn't fear. This was more than fear.

"It isn't possible..."I muttered, a world of questions torrenting in my ears, creating a rushing noise in my mind that I couldn't block out. Because it shouldn't have been possible. Because I couldn't have done it. Even I couldn't have done it. So how-

"Well? What is it?" His voice was almost too hushed for me to hear over my own thoughts. I held the grain higher, but I needn't look. I could feel it now, coarsing through my fingers, embedded in the single grain. Concentrated. Imagining thousands upon millions of these making up just one nightmare.

And I could only wonder what a person would possibly want to do with something like that, created with something like this. Fear I could understand. Fear I'd done.

"Well this...certainly makes things more interesting." I breathed, lowering the grain, no longer to see into it, but to look at the almost imperceptible speck and marvel in all that it held.

"Vat? Vat does?!" I was too deep, thinking too hard, to care for my answer. Throwing it out quietly and absentmindedly. Because there was much, much more to this than someone taking my ideas and merely remodeling. Something cold ran down my spine, and an image of something red, the whisper of a name, stood on a tightrope across my mind, amidst all the chaos. A solitairy focus.

"...Hate."

_-Alice-_

I'd never baked anything before. Ever. In countless eons of walking the universe, experiancing things that even I could no longer fathom, I'd never once baked a cookie.

"Oh, it's easy! Here, Sandy, can you get me some eggs? We're gonna stir this!" Toothiana was considerably more animated away from the group. Or maybe it was just that she was more comftorble without Aster's glares, or Jack's just being there. Now she almost seemed to settle, smiling at me with a staggering confidence and flitting around as if we'd been speaking for years.

There was trust in her eyes. A trust I never expected to see here, not outside of Jack anyway. And I wished it made me uncomftorble, because I didn't quite know how to act when I was...relaxed. When I myself wanted to smile back, when I wanted to laugh and nod and speak freely. I didn't now if I was allowed to. I just knew that I wanted to. I just knew that I should be much more uncomftorble in this situation with these circumstances this close to a Guardian and the Sandman.

But I was relaxed, no matter how hard I tried.

Toothiana mixed things in a large, red bowl, Sandman dumping flower silently into it as she did.

"See? Wisk it lightly until it gets all gloopy." She explained, wrist flicking the thick substance around. I stood a distance away at the small, marble island in the kitchen. The room was supposed to be the smallest kitchen, but it was still a very, very long rectangle that was about as wide as the overlook and longer than I thought made sense. Machines and ingrediants were all along the walls, us standing in the center of them.

"Here!" Tooth suddenly said, snapping my attention back. She was thrusting the red bowl and the wisk at me, beaming and large, violet eyes glistening excitedly, as if this were a very special moment for her, "You try it, Alice! It's fun!"

_It's wisking._

I paused a moment, hands halfway to taking the bowl, when a thought hit me. I froze, eyes flickering up to her. In her eyes I must have looked uncertain, I must have looked shy, but I did not feel shy. I felt something in my chest. Something strong and warm and painful. Because Toothiana was much more than I would have given her credit for.

She was guilty.

And when I slowly glanced to the Sandman, he was too. Smiling and shooing me on with tiny hands. Regret in golden eyes. They knew, too. And there's this funny little thing about regret that I'd noticed over the years: It was true. It was the truest emotion a person could feel. Love could be thousands of different shades. Anger could be misplaced or mistaken. Happiness could be fake. But guilt...guilt was something no one could hide or fool. It was a small dog backed into a corner. It was bold print.

And as sick as it sounded, their guilt was the first thing that made me like these two. I'd never met a good person who never felt guilty at some point.

I took the bowl.

"Great! I'll go preheat the oven!" Tooth exclaimed, darting off behind me as I slowly wisked, trying to force flowery pieces on the sides into the mix. It smelt like vanilla and sugar. There was a noise in front of me, and I looked up to see Sandy offering small little figures above his head, sand images that made a tinkling sound when they appeared and dissapeared. He had to repeat himself twice before I understood.

_'You finally slept last night.'_

Of course the Sandman knew my sleeping patterns. Which meant he knew my lack of sleeping patterns. I nodded to him, saying into the mix below me,

"Yeah, I was...really tired. I think it was from the ambush..." I paused, and then looked up at him, biting the inside of my lip for a moment, "Can...can you tell when everyone is sleeping?"

_'Yes. Why?'_

"I was just wondering how...well, I mean just because he's seemed a bit tired lately, I was wondering how well Pitch was sleeping." I clenched my teeth and screamed in my head when Sandy paused a moment, eyebrows raising and falling from his cloud to lightly sit in the center of the island. The pause wasn't long, but it was murder.

_'Hasn't slept.'_

We'd been here for four days. I nodded, pretending to be increasingly involved in wisking, when all I could think about was that how, every single time, Pitch had been awake and roaming the halls when I was. I'd never stopped to think that maybe that was _all _he did at night. I never stopped to wonder why I was so concerned about it.

There were three consecutive beeps behind me and the fluttering of wings, and then Toothiana was setting a metal tray in front of me.

"That's beautiful, Alice! Now let's do the really fun part!" She exclaimed, gently taking the bowl from me and motioning the Sandman over. He sat closer, on the other side of the baking sheet, and reached a tiny hand into the bowl, coming out with a glob of white dough. Toothiana did the same. I waited until she silently motioned for me to do the same, and then dug my fingers into the cold, raw dough.

"Just palm it until it's about the size of the cookie you want, like this...oh good! You said you've never done this before! Now now too much now...great! Onto the pan we go!" She instructed as I mashed the dough into a rough circle and placed it onto the tray, repeating the process again. This I could do. This was nice. This was...almost fun. Almost.

"So, Alice, how are you liking the Workshop? Isn't it just amazing?" Toothiana said happily, all three of us working the dough. I thought of the toys, the tour Jack had taken me on, the wonder. The halls and the windows. The carvings and the magic that hid in the walls and danced in the air around you, no matter if you were a Guardian or girl.

"It's...spectacular." I managed, and Tooth smiled out of the corner of my eye.

"Oh, if you think this is pretty, you should see my palace! Big and gold and it holds all the teeth ever lost by children. Thousands of memories, all in little golden tubes- Oh!" She exclaimed so suddenly that I jumped, looking up at her wide-eyed with a half-flattened doughball in my palms. She looked at me with wide, excited eyes, and asked with feathers flaring, "Wait! Alice, is it possible I have your babyteeth?! If I do, then we could find them and give them to you and you could remember everything! Like what happened...you know..." She got a bit quieter at the end, but the smile was still there.

And I hated my answer.

"Oh, yeah...no. No, I've never lost a tooth here on Earth. Ever, actually, I think. I don't remember...which I guess is the point. What I mean is...I was already really old when I came to Earth. All my teeth, if I had any that fell out, already had when I was in...um, 'space' I guess." I flinched, ready for the dissapointment.

"Oh well! It was a thought, at least." She shrugged it off and began to hum, smiling so wide it crinkled her eyes. The guilt was still there, unwavering. But so was the trust. So was the guilless happiness. So was the joy and the lightheartedness. She wasn't dissapointed. She wasn't angry. She wasn't quiet and sad. She didn't hate me. I didn't move. I didn't kneed the dough in my hands.

I smiled.

Tooth was humming until she caught me not moving, and then looked over in confusion, brows pulled and frowning. Until she saw me. Then there was surprise. And timidness. And tenderness. And only once all of those had gone through, did she quietly smile back, and go back to her cookies. And I did the same, still smiling, if just with one corner of my mouth.

It felt like stretching a muscle after sitting for hours. It felt like turning a light on in the room. And I breathed in deeply the smell of sugar and vanilla, and wondered if things weren't as terrible as I thought. That maybe it was going to have to take baby steps.

But maybe this could work.

We placed the cookies in the oven, and waited, the Sandman and Toothiana showing me how to make hot coco. It was fifteen minutes in when the door opened, and I turned to see North standing in the doorway. His face looked tired, and for a moment I was worried that something had happened. Pitch wasn't with him, neither was Aster.

"Es going well, but my belly needs some coco! Am withering away in office-" He cut himself off and looked to me, eyebrows slowly raising and eyes widening. I was confused, until Tooth fluttered happily by with a big green mug, and I saw my reflection in it.

I was still smiling.

Immediatley I coughed into my hand and stopped, face relaxing and looking awkwardly away from North, who was muttering something to Tooth. When I glanced up, she was smiling back at me, and then whispered something to the large Guardian. His small, bright eyes fell on me, and I stood there frozen, waiting. It couldn't happen twice. And North was different. He was the Guardian of Wonder. He was the leader. He had more obligations, he had a world of children to care for, he was the protector. He was as skeptical as Aster. He deserved to be.

When he smiled at me, small and bursting with light, my mouth fell slightly open and I just blinked back at him.

Toothiana chuckled and shooed him out, North nodding and thanking us for the coco before leaving. Still smiling. Toothiana fluttered past me as if nothing had happened, me still standing there and looking at the close door in shock. He had smiled at me. And it...it felt so...

_Nice. It felt nice, and warm, and accepting, and what was with these people?_

__I heard a light chuckle, and turned to see both of them looking at me in amusement while stirring chocolate into warm milk.

"What?" I asked defensively, and the Sandman smiled so wide he had to close his eyes to fit it on his face.

"You look like no one's smiled at you before. It's so cute!" Toothiana said, and I shrugged, answering,

"Well...not since Jack. And before him...not in a few eons. Not since I can remember. I mean it's just..." I tried to find the words, but the ones that came were not the ones I wanted, "...just strange that you guys are being so kind, when you still don't trust me enough to let me know what's going on. Keeping me and Pitch separated because he's less of a threat to you."

Her eyes went wide. Her brows went together. The Sandman frowned a bit. And though I bit back my words, I felt a weight lift off. I felt a barrier break down. They knew. And now they knew that I knew. And all I had to do was wait for the pain and dissapointment and suspicion to come back. Wait for them to stop being so kind. I looked away.

A light hand fell delicately on my shoulder.

"Alice...I'm so sorry it has to be this way. It really is wrong."

Her eyes were sad. And for the first time, I wasn't the one who had to look away first. When my head swiveled to her, her eyes flickered over to the wall. Her hand was still on my shoulder, her feet on the floor for the first time since I'd known her. She was small. She was shorter than me. She held inside of her so many things that I didn't understand. Was capable of emotions that caught me off guard. I wasn't used to not being able to read a person ahead of time.

I looked to the Sandman when Toothiana continued to look away, and though he held my gaze, his face was the same. Sad. Regretful. Nothing to hide it now.

Something lightened the weight on my chest.

"You think it's wrong?" I asked, looking to the Sandman. He quirked an eyebrow, but nodded.

"Of course we do. You don't deserve to be all cooped up like this. We're treating you like a criminal, after all you've done to protect Jack and stop those monsters." Toothiana explained, looking at me with a sad frown. Her hand was still on my shoulder.

"But aren't I a criminal? Isn't that why you all didn't want me here in the first place?" I had to know, I had to understand. I couldn't handle being lost any longer.

"We...we were ignorant, Alice. When we were told stories about you, we imagined someone terrible, someone absolutely awful, but you're none of those things. You were small and kind, and scared, and lost. We didn't know you, Alice, but now we do and...I just wish we could change things."

"You don't know. I don't know. I could have done those things that people say."

Her hands cupped my face, and her smile made me want to cry.

"Maybe you did. Maybe the person you were really did do all of those things. But you forgot, right? You were given a blank slate, and look what kind of a person you turned out to be." She placed her hands on my shoulders and squeezed, eyes crinkling, "I love who you are now. Sandy does too, right Sandy?" The golden man nodded behind her.

If Toothiana hadn't been holding me so firmly by the shoulders, I might have staggered and fallen.

_She didn't mean it. No one ever means that. You've heard pleanty of humans say that and not mean it. Even non-humans. Especially to you..._

But Toothiana wasn't the kind of individual to say that and not mean it. Her actions, her words, her kindness was never given away at a whim. They meant something, as jovial as they were.

"Alice?"

"Did you mean that?" I blurted out, not ready if this was a joke, not about to commit myself if it were a lie. She looked confused for a moment, and then sad, and then happy. Her face was a canvas that kept getting painted over.

She clutched me into a hug before I could do anything, crushing my ribs and rubbing her cheek into mine.

"Oh, of course I do! Sandy, come here!" I was frozen, muscles clenched because what if I moved? What if I moved and it ended and this never happened again? The Sandman's tiny arms wrapped around Toothiana and me, and I didn't want to let myself relax. Didn't want to admit how warm I felt inside and out. Didn't want to confess how hard I was trying not to cry. How much I wanted this to be real.

How much I wished I'd hugged them back.

A deep, thunderous growl broke through the door.


	11. A Paper Cut

_-Alice-_

The door exploded inward so violently that the shattered pieces of it covered the entire room, giving Tooth barely enough time to scream, giving me barely enough time to throw my hands out in front of me and give us a silver shield. The noises coming from the other side were horrific, and I knew what I'd find if I lowered the barrier between us and them. And I didn't move for a second. Just one second, I only took a second.

_Leave me alone..._

My fingers curled in fast, and the shield blew forward and whiped out the first wave of them. Without thinking, without looking back, I jumped the island and landed running, throwing myself out of the room and stopping only to look up.

Which, in itself, was a mistake.

It wasn't night, not for another seven hours. But you wouldn't know if you stood where I stood, looking up and seeing nothing but black covering where the outlook should have been. The hole that showed us the sun and the moon was nothing but the blackness that manifested itself into the creatures already in the Workshop. The creatures who were trapped in here with us. Who we were trapped with. Because, looking around, the windows were all blacked out, as well. And as strange as it was, I took a moment to appreciate whoever was doing this.

They were relentless. And they were terrifyingly good at this.

There were many of them, but they moved too fast to count, shooting through the air and leaving only swirling trails of black shadow behind them. Screeching, pawing, throwing their heads back, but never attacking. They were spinning, making circles and getting too close to terrified and furious yetis, smashing their teeth at them. But they weren't attacking. Not yet.

I turned and sprinted up the stairs, two at a time, because no matter what was in the Workshop right now, I had to warn Jack. I had to warn Pitch. I searched, for the first time, for the connection. I didn't wait for it to come to me, I didn't wait for it to pull or snag or jerk itself to let me know that it was still there. I looked for it. Because what if this wasn't the first place the nightmares had gone?

I almost didn't see it until it was too late. Black exploded in front of my face and I gasped, sliding wrong and rolling my ankle, skidding onto my hip and slamming an elbow too hard into the tiles below me, my other arm going up out of instinct. Through half-closed lids I saw a flash of silver against black, heard a roar that shook me to my bones, and when it dissapeared there was a tall, grey man standing behind the scene.

"Get up!" He shouted, and I rolled sideways and onto my feet. A sharp pain shot up my leg, a knot of nerves twisted on my right ankle, and I stumble backwards until my hands his the rail behind me, gritting my teeth and trying not to cry out. There was a rumbling behind me, and I looked up, Pitch standing in front of me, eyes caught between fury and concern, flashing between me and whatever was behind me. His eyes were wide, his pupils were dilated, and I felt as if the nightmares were gearing up now.

As if they'd been waiting for him.

"Pitch," I half-panted, "You need to get out of here. _Now_."

"And how exactly do you expect me to do tha-" He was cut off by a black flash to my right, shooting right towards him and condensing into the front half of a nightmare mid-way. Mouth open too wide to be natural, skin ripping on its lips, eyes wide and wild like fire. I may have screamed his name, I may have just screamed, or I may have mimicked the nightmare's face silently, but I felt my mouth stretch and my hands fly out in front of me. Pitch's hands moved at the exact same time, in the same fashion, in tandem.

Silver and shadows collided with the nightmare, and the three others that were surrounding it. My adrenaline was pumping, and the roars of the others were deafening me slowly, but I saw. I saw what happened when it collided, when it spiralled and danced and destroyed. And it was beautiful and terrible and amazing and horrific all at the same time. It was the kind of thing that paints itself on your bones, the beauty you wish you could forget but, if given the option, never would.

It was shadows and stars. It was the nightsky.

_Home._

"Alice!" Jack's voice this time, and I felt like I was caught in a haze. Whatever I'd seen, the nightmares, the darkness, the dimness of the Workshop, all of the roars and the voices and the panic and the blood pumping into my ears, all of it was swirrling around a haze in my head. It felt stuffy, it felt like everything was too big and too much. Inside, I was trying to claw my way out of it.

I turned, clawing at one that was less than an inch from my face, seeing another dive-bomb Jack and freeze in mid-air, shattering loudly on the ground as the others stormed in. A wizz of wings. A Russian swear. The sound of a boomerang in the air. I couldn't concentrate, just seeing everything happen, just seeing them fighting and shouting and wondering why, why so soon after the last? Was this it? Was this the big battle?...

But it was too soon. I didn't know how I knew, or why it felt so solidly true, but this was too soon. This wasn't it. It was a small attempt. A warning bite.

That may be all he'd need. I pictured the man's face, his eyes, standing there and watching and shaking his head, thinking that we went down so easy. The Guardians. Pitch. I thought of the man and the nightmares around me and the chaos and the screaming. I thought of Toothiana's hug and Pitch and Jack. I thought of the Workshop and nights wandering and the smell of sugar.

My thoughts turned into feeling, and they built up in my veins, swarming through me as I stood there, still as a statue, hair moving in the wind that the nightmares stirred up. The shadows were twisting and they were alive, and so was something inside of me. A different memory. Something my body remembered from another lifetime, something it knew had to be done again. My skin buzzed, my breath caught, and the swirrling haze inside my head snapped long enough to see North being ambushed by seven nightmares.

His eyes were angry, his brows furrowed, two curved swords out in front of him, and doing his best not to look terrified. And I thought about his home, and his generosity, and his love for Jack. And I knew that I couldn't stand here any longer. My body moved upon decision, and all I could do to warn North was scream something that resembled his name. I couldn't hear myself, not with the roaring that I threw myself right into, blackness popping in front of my face and then just swatches of color.

Black. Red. White. Red. Silver. White. Red. Sequences, sounds and roaring and the hope that I could do this one more time, just keep them off one more time, and that would be good enough. That they would be safe and so would Pitch and this would all just stop.

There was a moment in time where I blacked out. I could have been the stress, or the noise was too much, or I was so poundingly terrified that my mind couldn't handle it. Or it was me falling back in time, body settling into another lifetime, another place where I knew exactly what to do. I didn't know what happened. I just remembered a flash of light.

_-Pitch Black-_

I watched every second, and the image was just as hard to believe as if I'd never seen it at all.

Because she was so _small._

Because she was Alice. Tiny, timid, afraid, strange Alice.

And now, she was a force of nature.

There she stood, in the center of the nightmares, shoving North to the side and turning, face a mixture of sweat and fear and fury, and then they glazed over and her body erupted with light. I thought of Jack, of when he combated my nightmares the first time, of the impressive display of power and how astounded I was of such a small person weilding such large capacities of strength. And I couldn't compare them.

Because this happened so fast, so suddenly, that I wasn't entirely sure it had happened at all. She stood, her head tilted back, and light shot throught the entire Workshop so suddenly that it was like someone had turned the lights on high, and we were all blinded for a fraction of a second.

And then it was gone.

And then it was _all gone._

The light and the shadows were washed away, and we stood there with the only evidence of anything having disrupted peace being Alice. Collapsing.

_-Alice-_

The floor came at me hard, and my arms buckled beneath me, catching myself on an elbow as I sucked breath in and out, feeling like I was about to be sick. My throat burned and my lungs were too tired, my heart rusting almost to a half and my blood on fire. I felt like I'd run all my life and was only allowed now to stop. And I was tired. I was so, so tired, that I would have fallen asleep right then had North not shouted above me.

"Alice! Es okay?!" Two massive hands wrapped almost completely around my shoulders and lifted me up to my feet, where I winced again because of my ankle. But after what I'd just done, the pain seemed trivial. It felt faded and just a dull ache somewhere in the background. I groaned, rubbing my face with my hands and then running my fingers back through my hair, holding them at the back of my neck and keeping my eyes closed.

"I'm...I'm fine, I guess. I'm tired. Is everyone-" I choked. I shouldn't have opened my eyes. And I shouldn't have asked. I really shouldn't have asked. "What happened to your hand?!"

He looked at it like he didn't know. He shrugged like it was nothing. Like it wasn't a large cut running from the crease between his thumb and pointer finger all the way to his wrist. Brushed off the silver dust like he didn't know how it had happened. Looked like he didn't see me blanch. My blood running cold. My stomach dropping. The world falling heavily onto my body.

"Es small scratch-"

"Did I do that?" He looked up, confused, holding his hand up and still gripping the curved sword. The red stung my eyes. My chest was locking up. The words were already mummbling in the back of my mind.

"Um...well, es accident, no? You saved me! Alice...Alice? Es no big deal, you-"

"I hurt...I..." I couldn't finish it. I couldn't stand there, I couldn't look at it, and I couldn't listen to the voices _and _what I felt was coming all at once. I needed silence. I needed myself. I needed a tree and a world where I didn't actually think that this was going to be okay. I needed lies that I told myself to be true and I needed to do anything differently. I needed sleep.

I needed to get out of this area, because the last thing I could take was any of them seeing North's wound on top of me and what I felt coming on. I was walking back slowly, at first, but when North sheathed the sword, I turned and ran. Ran fast, ran hard, ran past Pitch and under Tooth, ran away from their voices and how exceptionally pathetic I was right now. Ran towards my own room like a child.

Like a child who needed to escape the monsters in the basement. Except I was the monster, and I didn't know where to hide other than in this room, in my own head, and letting me rip myself to pieces. The hallway was a blur, the door was a brown splotch, and the slamming of a lock into place was background noise. My back against the wall was numb, sliding down to the floor and curling up until I felt that nothing could touch me, face buried behing my legs and hands pressing into my temples, fingers laced into my hair and holding me there.

And then it was dark and there was just my mind.

_What did you expect?_

I don't know. I don't know what I expected. I don't know.

_Yes, you do. You know what you expected. What you hoped and how you just assumed that they would-_

Accept me now. Because what had I done? Gotten ambushed with Jack. Put him in danger. Given vague details about every question they wanted answered. I assumed that was enough, after years and eons. I assumed. And who was I to do that? Who was I to think such things?

_That they'd be your-_

Friends. Maybe, even, family. That they would-

_Forgive you for your past. Forget-_

That I could have been such a horrible person, that I could have orphaned a child, and now-

_Now you hurt one of them. Now you hurt Nicholas St. North, and that's the tipping point, isn't it? That's where you finally realize that no matter what you do, who you're with, how much they hug you, the smiles they give you, the love they claim, the warmth you feel, the trust you hold, the hope you have, how much you assume, the time that passes-_

I will never be forgiven.

It settled in my stomach and caved me inward. I tried. I tried so hard. I tried and it wasn't good enough.

_"Alice."_

It was so short and so beautiful, and I was the fool who thought that this was something permenant. That I wouldn't ruin this.

_"Alice."_

Two hands settled over mine, and it was only then that I realize I was shaking. Because I felt their hands running smooth thumbs over the backs of my knuckles, felt a gentle voice saying something above the water that I was under. And even though I was pulled in tight together, they pulled a rope that brought me back, breaking above the water. And I breathed for the first time in a long, long time.

"Alice. Dear, look at me." His voice wasn't normall like this. It wasn't normally soft and concerned and so quiet that it fell between us only. Not in this lifetime, anyway. "Come on now, it's fine. This won't kill you." I took another breath that settled the shaking in my bones, and I sat back but did not look up. Because now the horrific embarrasement set in, and I realized just how pathetic I looked. Small and curled up over a paper cut. But it wasn't just a paper cut. It couldn't be.

"Well that's a start, I suppose... Oaf. Talk to her."

"But...vat should I say?"

"What do you think, you buffoon? Why do you think this happened to her?"

"I..."

"Tell her she didn't ruin everything. Tell her you don't hate her." It almost sounded like a challenge, and I wouldn't look up to see it. The silence was short and heavy, and the thumbs continued on the backs of my knuckles. Slight, going over only two or three, but it raised my skin and soothed my wrists. My hands were going limp, the fists unfurling. A deeper, coarser, worlds more gentle voice spoke.

"Alice, es...you think you are in trouble?" I didn't nod, just turned my head slightly to the side. I didn't want to see him. I didn't have to. I heard a deep, shaking, terrible sigh. "...We were so wrong. I did not realize..." The tears were fought back, my muscles relaxed, because hadn't I been expecting this all along? Hadn't I wanted them to go back on their word to Jack? Why had it taken so long?

"Not so nice, realizing that maybe you didn't know everything?"

"Look what we've done...Alice, babushka, look at me ja?" I swallowed. If I did this, maybe he'd end it faster, and no matter how hard it hurt at least I'd know that it was true. That I was looking in his eyes and knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was how it really played out. I looked up and opened my eyes, pressing my spine into the plaster of the wall.

Pitch knelt in front of me, his hands on mine, eyes looking at me hooded and angry and concerned and strangely gentle. He looked like he'd done this before. He looked like he was about to kill something. He looked like he was holding a child. He was two extremes put into a way that blended them. I wanted to grip his hands so tight, to not let go. I wanted to remember a time when he'd done this before.

North's face was so sad that it made me want to cry. Worlds of pain were in those eyes, looking at me and so, so heavy. And it was there. And I didn't want it to be there, wasn't ready to see it there, not in him. It laced into every line and scar. Guilt weighted the Guardian of Wonder's face.

"You are not in trouble Alice...we are." I tried not to listen, but the words caught me and held fast. "We...could not..." He paused and held his hands out below him, looking down into them as if he were reading from a book. His large, heavy shoulders fell, and he looked at me with the face of a man who knew what mistakes were. "You have had hard life, yes? We are supposed to stop that. We are supposed to _protect _children...protect our friends. Alice, am not good with words, but...you have saved us on so many an occasion. But we treat you so terribly..." He placed a large hand out towards me, hesitantly, afraid. But not of me. Of...himself, maybe, or his action.

My hand was in his before I knew it was moving, a large palm surrounding my fingers as his other hand closed over ours. Pitch's thumb ran over my other hand, still, his free hand in his lap. North squeezed lightly.

"If you will forgive, we would like to...start new?" He asked. It wouldn't happen fast. It wouldn't happen easily. In all realism, it wouldn't happen at all. I had no reason to believe him or any of his words, no cause to trust the Guardian who had orchastrated ways to keep me from the others, to keep me locked away and quarantined. I really shouldn't have.

I nodded, slowly and in segmented pauses, and North's entire face lit up. His smile pushed his cheeks forward and made his eyes all small and squinty, blue irises gleaming and hands squeezing mine just a bit too tight. He looked like he was about to burst, like he was keeping back some sort of war cry, and I fought the urge to push back into the wall. Because Nicholas St. North was smiling at me, and as much as I wanted to smile back, I was nervous.

I felt a thumb go over my middle knuckle, and when North let go over my hand I looked at Pitch. He was looking at North, as well, with shifting and suspicious eyes. Warning eyes. He was sitting almost hostily, though relaxed and composed. His eyes were darker, and they weren't quite seething, but they were an elegant warning.

And it was quick. It was a flash, a sudden glance North's way, but he wasn't looking. Pitch closed his eyes, breathed and composed himself, all the while me sitting there and wondering if he was still concious of his thumb on my knuckles. All the while hoping that it didn't matter, that he'd keep doing it.

North stood with a loud grunt, dusting off his knees and looking at me with a more toned-down version of his smile.

"Very good, very good! I will have to talk to others-"

"Like Aster?" I asked, knowing full well that he wasn't in on this deal. And I was okay with that. Five out of six wasn't bad, if Pitch counted. He gave a nervous laugh and ran a hand through his beard, holding out a hand and saying with a shrug,

"Vat is there to do, yes?" I nodded and paused, looking to Pitch. For assistance. For guidance. For the next words. Instead, he silently took his hand away(and I thought that he knew, the whole time, that he was comforting me) and stood, looking down to me with the hand half-out, as if waiting for me to ask. With a bit more pride than that, I pushed myself up the wall and took a step.

My knee crashed to the floor.

"Ow, ow, ow!" I exclaimed, feeling the shooting pain up my ankle and the extreme fatigue wrap its fingers around me again.

"Oh!" North stepped next to me, but Pitch's adept hands were already on my shoulders and lifting me up, removing themselves too quickly to have been stroking my hand just seconds earlier. Instead, I leaned a hand against the wall and lifted my ankle, rubbing a hand down my face and shaking my head. "Es okay? Your ankle?"

"Um, yeah...I just need a nap. Or something longer. I'm just really really tired." I said, slowly setting my foot down. The pain was ebbing now, just sharpening if I put all my weight on the foot. I shook it a bit.

"Ok, es fine-"

"No. We don't know if this place is safe yet, no matter what she did. One impressive display of power isn't going to keep them away. And, now that we know that they know where the Workshop is, I don't think letting her be vulnerable alone right now is such a wonderful decision." Pitch intervened, and I almost groaned. I was so tired, it felt like my bones were iron and my eyes were drying out. "How about we clean up whatever mess was made while you and your little hairy minions figure out a way to keep this place safe for more than five minutes."

Pitch said all of this as he walked out of the room, opening the door and looking back to me, an eyebrow raised in waiting. I paused, looked from him to North, who looked perplexed and a bit taken aback. I looked between them like a child and their parents.

"Um..." I articulated, but North nodded before I could speak and raised out his arms. I moved quickly to Pitch, fearful that North would, of all things, try and hug me. The thought was ridiculous, but that didn't keep me from quickly stepping past Pitch, into the hallway and trying to avoid the destruction all around us. I could have sworn he stifled a laugh.

_-Pitch Black-_

I heard the others speaking to her as I paused outside her door, running my thumb over my fingers. I felt her skin there, the cold fingers and the smooth skin. The shaking bones and the pulsing veins. I could feel the threads knotting between my thumb and her skin, and for a moment I let myself become intertwined. I let myself, for a moment or more, fall into that tugging, that insistance that this was how it had been once. For her, because no one should crack like that.

Because that's all she did. Crack. A fracture in a foundation that shouldn't have to be so damn strong. I heard Toothiana fretting, I heard Jack worrying, I heard sand from Sandman, and I heard mummbles from Aster. I soothed my own anger, thinking of making a lucky rabbit's foot to keep me safe in these coming days. Because, dear me, things were about to get very interesting.

I looked out the window, and wondered why I thought that I should have seen a man standing there and looking back. He knew where we were. No, not we. Me. He knew where I was, and that just so happened to be everywhere Alice was. If I had any shred of humanity left in me, I'd make this easier for everyone. North and the others were more shaken than they'd admit. He still stood in the room, thinking in his ancient mind, wondering what he'd gotten himself into. I hadn't even reached this caliber of threat before. Hadn't struck a blow at home-base.

Yes, if I had a heart, I'd have at least distanced myself from Alice.

Oh no, though. This tinman wasn't going anywhere very soon.


End file.
